#the little traveling muscians cannot hope to salvage this fucking game for me. those fantastic combat shrines cant salvage this game.

[waywardsalt]

putting this under the cut immediately because i KNOW this is going to be extremely long

general disclaimer, its not my kind of game im not blaming the actual devs for most of this shit i understand gamedev and writing and animating and all of that shit is hard yadda yadda anyways i fucking despise totk with an acidic rage and im trying to swear off of bitching about it any further but tbh i gotta get my actual thoughts out of my system somehow.

i guess my biggest issue with totk at the moment now is just that... it feels like it's the gaming equivalent of dangling keys in from of some kids face to get their attention; it's shiny, it's got fun gmod-ass glue mechanics, you get three whole maps and... it feels very hollow and like they just wanted to make a fun game and let everything else rot while the gameplay was polished to an insane degree- and i see why it's likely getting good scores despite the story and worldbuilding and theming and literally everything but the gameplay being rough as hell, its a fucking open world game with stupid glue mechanics where you can built the shit you want and go anywhere and like.

i didn't even like ultrahand very much, so there was no chance of this game actually winning me over. more often than not ultrahand was a hassle for me to use outside of solving puzzles with it. the gameplay isn't even particularly fantastic when you take away ultrahand bullshit or the admittedly impressive recall and ascend, it's just there to prop up the stock-standard open world game exploration and combat, which is effectively the exact same with the additions of every weapon being shit and funneling you into using ultrahand-mini (fuse) and giving you the chance to create insane destructing machines, which- where does that fit in? where does the zonai garbage being crazy weapons fit in with like... the zelda feel? idk the gameplay did literally feel like botw but with different abilities. ultrahand and fuse were effectively the same thing and the abilities just had. no decent story integration you just get these weird ass abilities because the devs wanted to let the player so whatever the fuck.

i mean, just... i know there's this general idea with loz games where they come up with the gameplay gimmick first and then build everything else around it, and totk is where it's the most painfully obvious. it is extremely easy to tell that the gameplay was the first priority in creation. with the other games, the gameplay gimmicks and story mesh pretty well, and everything is about equal- but the gameplay in totk sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison to the story and... everything. the story does just feel like an excuse for the different gameplay mechanics they decided to cook up.

i mean there's no real reason for why link getting rauru's arm allows him to access those powers, especially since we never see rauru or mineru use those kinds of powers, the depths and sky don't really matter outside of the dungeons in them, and the zonai tech is messily integrated just to be toys, and zelda turning into a dragon just... gives you another dragon for resources, and along with ganondorf jsut lets you have this cinematic final boss- ganondorf turns into a dragon for the sake of that cinematic boss battle, there's literally no way for him to have known what would have happened if he ate the stone. ganondorf being in the game alone is just... they added him because it's ganondorf, they don't actually go forward with making it matter that it's ganondorf, just that they had calamity ganon in botw and decided hey why not people like ganondorf let bring him back. it practically doesn't matter that he's gerudo or even a human character. he's just treated like another flatly evil monster. he's evil for the sake of it, and any other possible backstory for him is either ignored by the story or stamped out by the way the narrative wants you to view him.

i dont know exactly what happened during development but i hope to hell the final story and worldbuilding isnt what they intended to do by the end. it all feels so hollow, echoing what past zelda games have done and reusing old tropes, either not improving on any of them or not understanding why those things worked the first time. totk's story is just so flat, hardly any new characters get time to breathe and make any real impression, the ancient sages are nameless and faceless and are barely more than symbols, sonia was quite literally fridged, mineru and rauru get their moments but they don't do anything beyond what is needed to advance the immediate plot, and any new characters in the present aren't that deep either, even ganondorf is just more flat than ever even if he had the most character to his animations.

they backtracked on zelda's character growth and character in general to just shove her into that same old dedicated princess mold and the game at large is so desperate to have you groveling at her feet like the rest of hyrule with the overbearing repetition of 'look how great and nice and smart and thoughtful she is :))))' and it's so bizarre how they shove her influence into every corner of the world, including those she really shouldn't be that involved in, and it just wraps around to being like... don't think about it just listen to us. that's what the whole game feels like, don't think too hard about it and just follow what the game wants you to do and think about all of this. the stable quests all boiling down to just finding a bunch of stupid quirky little misunderstandings of things zelda had benevolently done was one of the most frustrating experiences: why even fucking BOTHER with fake zelda even being a thing in the present if nothing outside the plot is done with it, and the stable quests would have been a great opportunity.

i didn't even bother with most of the side quests after i beat the main story; i did a smattering of bigger side quests, got the memories and all of the shrines and cleared the depths and finished the story and i havent touched it since. and then i played persona 5 royal and had the best time of my life. that game was a fantastic palate cleanser after totk.

i mean.... my favorite part of totk (asides from the music) was the depths, clearing that out and spending hours getting every lightroot, and as much as a i loved the depths, in hindsight it is BULLSHIT that you get what amounts to a worthless token for getting every single lightroot. same as the reward for every korok seed- that open world bullshit of there being no real payoff to these massive collectible undertakings buts a little 'you did it :)' token. SO much of the chests and rewards in totk were absolute dogshit, it was CONSIDERABLY worse than the rewards in botw especially since the weapons are worse across the board. i played totk around the same time as a friend of mine, and even they were starting to get irritated with the shitty rewards.

similarly, it was also a pain in the ass to see how they used the amiibo armor and other references to past games- it was so shallow and hardly every worth the effort and just... why even reference the old games anyways? totk has jack shit to do with any of them, much less the game it's supposed to be a goddamn sequel to, and it was just a worthless attempt at using nostalgia and references. you can utilize past game references and nostalgia well (imo fire emblem engage did a really good job with that) and totk just tossed that shit in there bc it could and then moved on. don't even bother.

tbh totk really did stampede over everything in botw, from basically ignoring most of zelda's characterization, to scrubbing away most of the stuff about the champions or sheikah... anything (i'm so pissed by that one interview thing. 'it all disappeared bc calamity ganon disappeared' ILL BITE YOU. NOT ALL OF IT IS GONE. THEY LITERALLY DISCUSS IT IN BOTWS EPILOGUE. they built that shit in preparation for clam ganon its not like clam ganon caused it to pop up it was like a massive contingency plan for ganon why would it all disappear anyways what the hell. what the fuck. considering the sheikah's history w/ the hylian royals its so doubly fucked), and just... oh my GOD what totk does with link is so. you cannot be doing this rn.

link being a non speaking character is totally fine and has been handled great in the past and tbh botw handled him being non-speaking with limited emoting in the memories bc it gave a valid reason and suggested that lack of pressure and memories is what allows him to be more visibly emotional in the present!!! and totk is like. ah. nope. hes stone faced again. even in front of his friends and the people he cares about. even though this was explained as being basically a defense mechanism for hyrule's safety being put on his shoulders in the past and he loosens up in present botw. oh you want to see him smile? at his friend? who he's fought tooth and nail to see again? too bad its out of bounds. poor boy looks like he could be a customizable character in most cutscenes. you could swap him out with any other character in those scenes and it would not matter. the common defense abt link feeling like he doesnt matter to the story is usually like 'oh but he's doing that stuff of course it matters' you are missing the point the problem is that it feels like link. link specifically. link the character from botw. it feels like he does not matter to the story. feels like he could be swapped out with any random character so long as they have the master sword in hand.

look the music was the best part of the game but like. the usage of motifs from botw that don't actually relate to anything in totk (such as bringing back the champion's motifs when. they have LITERALLY nothing to do with almost anything in totk). the music does a good job at pulling on your heartstrings but it feels like it's doing a LOT of that specific heavy lifting in the story. very little of the actual game content backs up the soundtrack. totk does not deserve its soundtrack imo.

tbh the new sages were kinda weak, too. yunobo is infuriatingly fooled by fake zelda at every turn, tulin (best boy) has the most lazy blink-and-you'll-miss-it character 'arc' abt him learning to work with others or whatever the hell that dialogue was trying to impress upon me, sidon... look i did the water temple first (hated it) and then moved on i barely remember much about sidon, and riju is unfortunately in the blast range of what was done to the gerudo as a whole. they're fine, don't really get much time to breathe, their powers range from decently useful to just straight up a pain in the ass, (mineru is the worst sage. her mech... using that thing is one of the most unpleasant gameplay experiences ive had in what might be years) and oh god the dungeons... those fuckers are not a 'return to form' they're cheap imitations of zelda dungeons of the past.

say what you will about the divine beasts but at least i didn't feel like i was being treated like a fucking moron while going through them. totk's dungeons were insultingly easy, robbing any puzzle completing satisfaction by either just handing you the solution on a shiny silver plate or having the puzzle just be some flavor of 'go hit that switch' totk's water temple is the WORST zelda dungeon i have ever played through good god. it feels like the inverse of what majora's mask had going on; while majora's mask was on a smaller scale, the dungeons are huge undertakings of interwoven puzzles that are just... mwah i need to replay majora's mask soon. despite the game's massive scale totk's dungeons didn't take half as long as some fucking shrines. idk. every other zelda game ive played from phantom hourglass to skyward sword had considerably better dungeons than totk. fuckin- ph is easily a zelda game aimed more for younger audiences and they have more complicated dungeons than totk. fuck the story felt darker than totk. FUCK, LINEBECK ALONE WAS A MORE WELL WRITTEN AND DEVELOPED CHARACTER THAN THE WHOLE CAST OF TOTK PUT TOGETHER- my copy of phantom hourglass cost me $70 to obtain. phantom hourglass is worth that $70 to me. totk is not.

(speaking of shrines, totk's shrines were fine, it was disappointing how many of them were just. empty with just the prize. i will say, however, I fucking LOVED the shrines where you were stripped of all of your items and dropped into a unique combat situation. a perfect blend of puzzle and combat that utilized the new abilities much better than literally any other part of the game i WISH they actually used the ideas present in those shrines throughout the whole game they were so so good)

of course, theres the uncomfortable implications in the plot of hyrule in the past, the zonai being heralded as gods and then just peacefully placing themselves as higher and in authority over the other races, and then the suggestion that again in the present the other races (in some form) return to being vassals of hyrule, pretty much everything with the gerudo and the way ganondorf is treated and some aspects of his design, how the female characters are treated and viewed across the board, the messy theming, hyrules seemingly complete infatuation with zelda… a lot of this game just made me feel icky, and not in an intentional way.

it almost feels like theres a sense of disdain aimed at storytelling and worldbuilding in general, hardly anything feels new and what is new just is awkwardly superimposed on existing concepts, those existing concepts being carelessly brushed aside, the world bending- sometimes nonsensically- to fit the new ideas totk introduces. all of the disparate parts do not fit together very well and every cool new idea either falls flat after any scrutiny or stands as an unsatisfactory answer to an interesting question. its messy and i get the vibe that they (whoever has the final say on this stuff) don’t care so long as it sells. it doesnt particularly inspire hope or interest in the future of the series if the attitude towards final-draft storytelling and worldbuilding is the same as we got in that interview snippet about the sheikah technology. it feels insulting after everything we’ve seen in this series.

totk arguably is dragged down the most by its story, and i think is has the worst story of the series on account of how hollow and blatently gameplay-enabling it feels. at least in past zelda games if things went unexplained, there was enough room and evidence to speculate. the sheikah tech situation has been explained with ‘it just vanished and no one cared’ and that just feels insulting, not only to the people who wanted a real answer, but also to the game itself.

idk what else to add this game is covered in the ooze for me and i hate it and wouldnt mind never playing it again. theres so much that just doesnt make sense, straight up sucks, goes nowhere, means nothing, is shallow and pointless, is uncritical of itself and what it says, and is just… im not surprised about the lack of dlc on the basis that they dont have any more gameplay to add. the story and world is the very least important thing to totk and it fucking sucks. the gameplay doesnt even do anything for me i just fucking hate this game and its elementary school recess level complexity world and story

To my fellow totk haters (people who started off mildly annoyed with the game's flaws, who then progressed into full on rage as almost everybody else seemed to love it): What did you most dislike about the game? If you can't decide, what were the biggest problems you had? What changes would you like to make?

This can be anything from gentle constructive criticism to a full on rage induced rant; I want to hear your thoughts, whichever form they may take!