#totk is a fun game I like the gameplay

[smilesrobotlover]

I am pretty harsh when it comes to criticizing games, but I don't think you should blame yourself for "overhyping TotK" for yourself. That's the whole point of marketing, I'd say, so if something underdelivered, then I think that's on the game and not the person unless you went in unreasonably expecting the impossible (which I doubt)

Yeaaaaah. But I feel the hype of the game is what ruined the story for me. But echoes of wisdom is clearly not as hyped as totk so hopefully I can like it

[ganondoodle]

since i cant stop thinking about things i care about and also i cant shut up ever im gonna say my bit about the "well of COURSE they destroyed everything shiekah after botw bc it nearly killed the entire country DUH do you not understand basic worldbuilding??" type of comment i had directed at me (mostly on twitter to no ones surprise and almost exactly worded like this)

--how would you even destroy it, the only thing you can actually damage with anything are guardians and nano-guardians, anything else cant even get scratched, hell you cant even climb the darn things, are you seriously trying to tell me they somehow completely pulverized not just the shrines but titans (divine beasts), the shrine of life and the pillars holding the guardians in storage around hyrule castle and the dome beneath it (whereever that went lol) when it was built to and DID last over 10 000 years ... and if you did somehow find a way to dismantle literally all of it why would you not ... use its parts for something else and also research it (lets be real here, purahs new towers are just the sheikah towers but more impractical and would by all means not need all of the material from all the missing stuff and the purahpad is just ... literally the shiekah stone but looking more like the switch and also worse bc its got almost none of the functions the shiekah stone had) they were so integrated into botws landscape removing them and their chambers would have been so much effort better spent in other places and just so unnecessary (think of the shrines at the twin mountains, removing all of that would be so dangerous and difficult to do), removing the pillars and the dome under the castle would endanger it collapsing no? there also would have needed to be a giant mechanism down there to make the pillars rise up, why would you go and try to destroy that instead of focusing on rebuilding the most important infrastrucutre

(on a sidenote, yes there are holes to the underground in the place of some shrines but its by far not all of them .. .even so there at the very least should be some rubble of them lying about at the bottom plus in most of their places its just plain earth, or sometimes even a cave locked by some puzzle which is.... so weird)

really the only explanation would be that it all just ... disappeared after zelda sealed ganon, which wouldnt only be hella unsatisfying as an answer but also again pose the problem that i would have caused the castle to collapse considering how shiekah tech was so integrated into it... unless it turned to earth somehow ... which would explain that but still be as satisfying of an explanation as 'it was all just a dream uwu' additionally, the zonau stuff under the castle wasnt even that far down so it must have intersected with the shiekah stuff, like the pillars or the dome?? but no its all just zonau ruins now wahoo

if literally all traces were gone and totk was a paralel to botw but with zonau instead of shiekah OK, they still called it a sequel tho, they still talk about the events of botw but in a way that sounds like it was just another lost legend, the tapestry exists as well, and there are a few old guardian parts on top of the hateno institute (still feels like an oversight considering how cleanly everything else was wiped off the map), plus purahs towers and the purahpad are clearly based off of it, so it cant really be some time fuckery either, some things still remain; it just doesnt add up and its frustrating as hell .. ... especially if you were like me completely thrilled and intrigued to learn more about the ancient shiekah, what WAS that dome under the castle for?? what WAS ancient energy really and why was it found in these specific places only?? did they know about ganondorf?? if they built stuff down there shouldnt they have inevitably come across the old tunnels?? the monks literally talk to link in botw why would they withhold that info, what reason could they have?

--by far my biggest annoyance with that excuse is that ... if you are so afraid of tech you dont fully understand being taken over by the bad guy again to the point you destroy not just the titans you basically worshipped as divine protectors but also immovable shrines that literally couldnt do shit to harm you even if they were pumped up to the brim with malice/miasma after they have already become non threatening/non functional anyway... HOW could you just go and fully trust and personally play around with new tech that LITERALLY rained from the sky out of nowhere, from a group of people no one knows shit about (like at least the shiekah were still existing and had a small part of recorded history) and never cared either until now that they are suddendly everywhere, even if it cant get corrupted somehow (kinda disproven by the spirit temple) how the hell would anyone know that?? if anything this would be a reason to be MORE afraid of it

even the ancient king that persecuted the shiekah bc he was afraid of their tech when they invented it didnt order them to destroy it, just bury it, despite them of all people knowing the best of how to completely destroy it??? and zelda doesnt seem like the type that would order old history and relics to be destroyed liek that??

it would have been such a golden opportunity to show that hey, the ancient shiekah based their tech on that of the zonau, they found the mines and tech and reasearched it to built their own from it, strucutres that show they were down here building the shrines from underground, titan prototypes, you cant do anything with it, its old and broken, but its there, environmental storytelling and all that

the shrine of life especially pisses me off bc thats like .. ok it was kinda not the best maybe but it still saved links goddamn life, even if it all became useless for some reason at least leave it there as a sign of respect, if there needs to be a cave have it be half collapsed after the cataclysm or something wheres the problem

(also idk if im the only one with that but in botws true ending when zelda says that vah ruta, i think, has stopped working it seemed like a good setup for more? and that she wanted to investigate that in the sense of ah shoot i want it to keep working tho and not in the sense of hell yeah lets smash it to pieces i know this is theory territory now but it seemed like it somewhat confirmed that the titans need a pilots strong spirit to work since they are not connected to the ancient energy network and the spirits of the champions passed on at the end ... the idea that ancient energy was spirit energy either gained from luminous stones or directly spirits is so neat, and i loved that idea of hey the reason why all of the energy went out all of the sudden is bc ganondorf is breaking free after having been kept in a stasis to use either his malice or his strong spirit to fuel it all has never left my mind since i first read about it bc its such a good setup for intrigue, like oh heck the ancient shiekah werent so coolio and 100% perfectly good either, maybe they knew about gans 'future' or history and hey why not trick him or sth into being sealed against his will so that problem is out the way and whoop hes pretty much an infinite source of energy nice lets use that for our research and not tell anyone oh no we created a monster (calamity gan) l guess we are gonna use the tech we fuel with his own life against him lol, OR you could have connceted it to the zonau maybe doing the sealing first and the shiekah discovering him later and being like oh neat an endlessly rich powersource we arent gonan tell anyone about weehoo

it would have tied into the ancient shiekah stuff, explained why it doesnt work well anymore, give a reason to explore the underground and discover it all, give a reason to why it was kept a secret bc no one wanted to admit yeah we made this monster ourselves whoops, give ganondorf a reason to be this angry and make it all more nuanced bc yeah ok maybe the zonau knew about gan and in their effort to prevent it caused it instead by sealing him before he became a problem and it all started a domino effect of disasters leading into all this mess that now poor zelda and link gotta solve

im not saiyng this is the better version or that i am better but again you can literally do so much with the setup for it all and what totk ended up doing with it feels so ... not even underused but straight up backwards treading you had it right on front of you INFINITE POTENTIAL AAARGH)

theres only so much fun gameplay and fantastic music can save and man can you imagine what could have been if the story got the same polish as the gameplay and music ;__;

[goldensunset]

*violently trembling* i need…. to find twilight princess for the wii… *gets shot by the ‘but you said you would finally play this one game!’ gun*

[scopophobia-polaris]

first female loz director and the gerudo seem to be written fine enough? wow... there ain't no way I thought we were in the worst timeline after totk

Yeah got through the main quest with the gerudo, it wasn't painful! It wasn't even bad! Still got them outfits but for the most part it was like oh cool!

I would say a lot of that oh cool is from the fact they didn't do a lot to even fuck it up to begin with, I'm gonna be real with yall this game is NOT worth $60USD

Edit: lemme say one thing, you know when people were being like damn totk story wasn't dark or mature at all why was this compared to Majora's mask again? And then all the zeldatwt people came out and said zelda is just a kid series domt expect good writing uH

This one feels like a kid's game. That ain't to say it's terrible I would say, hell I'm not far in it if I get something crazy that's like OH FUCK I'll reblog this post and say something but uh.....game for babies I'm gonna be shocked if anyone struggles with any puzzles cuz you CAN CHEESE THEM EASY ITS 🫢🤭

EDIT EDIT: I SWEAR IM NOT EVEN TRYING TO BE A DOWNER..... @ezlo-x HAS BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME IVE BEEN PLAYING....THEY KNOW I HAVENT BEEN A PARTY POOPER.....

[daily-tvs]

Daily TV #107: Master Sword

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[waywardsalt]

small little thing abt botw/totk and the future of zelda games considering it seems likely that future zelda games might be in the same style as those two and how i feel like botw/totk don't actually feel like zelda games (kind of messy i just typed this out in a kind of informal or whatever way) (this post is long af btw so uhhhh yeah)

im part of the group that claims that botw/totk aren't 'real' zelda games but... i guess they are technically 'real' zelda games, but... they sure as fuck don't feel like it, and because of that, i'm not at all excited with the idea of future loz games being in the same style, especially with the pitfalls these last two games have fallen into having been things that past zelda games did especially well, it feels like things have been sort of flipped on their heads in terms of what's being valued or whatever

like... the best parts of older zelda games were things like the story and the characters and the puzzles and the dungeons and stuff like that... the best parts of botw/totk right now are just the gameplay. people enjoy these new characters, but they dont have the narrative backing that older games do, they don't have the same impactful arcs or roles allowed by a more linear story

the point i want to get at though is how botw/totk honestly don't feel like direct evolutions or steps up from past zelda games but rather just... entirely different game styles (open world games) with the zelda flavoring and worldbuilding and story styling slapped on top.

i mean... i feel like a half-decent example of some other well-known franchises that have jumped on this (honestly kind of thoughtless) open-world bandwagon are mario (mario odyssey) pokemon (sword/shield and scarlet/violet) fire emblem (kind of. with some free-walking segments in 3 houses and engage) and the soulsborne type games (elden ring), these are all other well known and storied game series' that have somewhat made the move to open world, and i think that switch was a bit smoother, kept the core and integrity of the games that came before much better than botw/totk did

elden ring is the easiest to explain- the gameplay loop and core mechanics are the same and build upon past games' you just have more room to run around and get killed in with some little open-world flourishes like material gathering.

fire emblem is... a bit less flexible in terms of changing up the core gameplay, and the addition of open-world segments are added to add bonuses to the strategy gameplay and allow for more support-building oppourtunities and little minigames, and its more or less evolution from echoes' dungeon-crawling bits and the customizable castle in fates. the core gameplay still effectively works the exact same, just with some little class or mechanic tweaks and additions.

mario odyssey, though each world was pretty massive, still had your typical 3d mario platforming, and the new hat stuff fit in pretty well with olderpowerups and gimmicks, and the boss battles feel and work pretty similarly to the way they used it- odyssey does feel like an evolution from past mario games (ps. playing two-player with one person as cappy snaps the game in half. its the secret easy mode lol)

the new pokemon games are pretty much just the same as past pokemon games, theyre just open world and buggy as fuck rip have extra little open-world flourishes that build on what past games set up. the battling works the same as ever and the progression is the same with a number of powerful trainers you have to battle to continue forward.

with botw/totk... the progression is dramatically different in terms of power-scaling, world presentation, item-gathering, puzzle-solving... pretty much everything in the established zelda format. i get that it was pretty much the aim with botw to have a fresh start and throw out a lot of the old standards but it just makes them feel so dramatically alien to past zelda games; theyre completely different experiences in pretty much every single way, and as such they dont feel like what we've (well, people who have started with and spent a lot of time with other loz games) learned to associate with the zelda titles.

with open world games in general it's a bit harder to have a truly impactful narrative akin to those in past zelda games, anyways. i will admit that botw was a good execution of trying out something entirely new, and the narrative and gameplay and world actually complement each other very well, so despite what i've said in the past I can't really fault it's narrative too much since it's a less traditional sort of narrative and effectively does what it aims to do very well.

totk, on the other hand, proves that this style of game does not mesh with the old style of storytelling at ALL. linear games can have proper narratives with coherent stakes, developing characters, twists and reveals and building emotion and mood- and all of that is thrown out the window with totk when they decided to try and have both a more linear story with actual reveals and development and emotion, while also letting you literally spoil it for yourself out the gate.

you can't really have a well-executed story when players are capable of doing things drastically out of order and of jumping into story beats without the prior buildup and straight-up ruining what could be otherwise emotional reveals, and players being capable of doing this is hard-baked in how the game fundamentally works. I honestly feel bad for people who found the fifth sage by accident before anything else.

you can't effectively have a linear story with character growth and plot developments and impactful moments while also allowing it to be experienced out of order and with massive time gaps in between; with this kind of stuff, you can't really have your cake and eat it too. say what you will about the linearity of past zelda games, but i bet you that midna wouldn't be as beloved as a character as she is if it weren't for the linear order of the story and its events. certain parts of storytelling may demand for a linear manner of telling that story.

botw's story works because none of the memories reveal anything groundbreaking taht you don't already know; they are optional and merely give you more information about these characters from link's past and simply inform you about the girl keeping ganon at bay. if you find a late memory first, that's fine- it technically doesnt reveal anything too important to you, it just fills in some gaps for you and your player character. it makes sense within the story itself for the world to be so open and for you to be able to do what you can; the story is not the focus, nor is it even needed to beat the game. the story was made with the gameplay and what you are allowed to do in mind, and as such doesn't include things such as in-depth character development or important plot-twists.

on the other hand, you can easily spoil totk's biggest plot twist in a handful of different ways completely by accident, just by getting curious about the world around you. this can shatter a lot of the mystery or tension in the plot and this can happen completely by accident to someone playing the game organically and blindly. the story itself doesn't take this into account, it reads more like a linear story that would be more suited to a linear style of play, coming across things in order to ramp up the stakes and let things be revealed at the best possible time. (tbh totk's story doesnt seem to take the player into account in general, if the game forcing you to watch basically the same long cutscene four fucking times says anything, jesus christ)

narrative pitfalls aside, botw/totk put heavy emphasis on gameplay, but not in the same way older zelda games did, and as such trade away the unique items and gimmick-y game-specific mechanics for a small toolset handed to you out the gate. what botw/totk do- giving you everything you need from the start and having very little true varation in the gameplay from then on out- make sense and works just fine for an open world game. there is, however, a lack of actual depth to that gameplay that other open world games do have (off the top of my head, the ability to unlock and upgrade abilities and have general character upgrades in fenyx rising as well as the impressive depths of elden ring's combat and character customization system). the most depth botw/totk has to the actual gameplay is just the fourish different weapon types and the ways you use your fourish abilities (saying fourish bc for real ultrahand and fuse are fundamentally the exact same thing). there is also just raising the little defense numbers on your armor and getting more stamina and health, but that does absolutely nothing to the actual gameplay but make link more durable.

i mean, sure, health in past loz games just makes link more durable, too, but thats how health upgrades in any other game work.

the gameplay switch makes sense, considering the switch from a linear puzzle-adventure concentric game to a more sandbox-esque open-world game, but it does not mesh with the former loz formula at all, so while the shift in style makes sense, it makes me think that you can't have a previous-style loz experience in an open-world sandboxish sort of game. especially with how in totk you can very easily bypass most of the fire temple just using the mechanics handed to you at the start. you can't have the same type of zelda dungeons in a game where you are allowed to do it 'wrong' and the game itself does not allow for the same kinds of puzzles.

i am of the opinion that so long as future zelda games work the same way botw/totk did, we will not get old-school zelda-style dungeons again.

the loss of a variety of items used for specific puzzles and environment switches is the loss of a varied dungeon experience and the loss of the same kind of world and character progression as past zelda games.

you are handed everything you'll ever need at the start of botw/totk. the only thing that will meaningfully change is how much damage you do. there are no alternate strategies opened up by new items that can double as weapons, no new traversal options or routes opened up by things such as grappling hooks or clawshots or whips or specific wands. even the battle system is drastically different, instead of being enemies that take specific amounts of hits to die while you can obtain progressively stronger swords, enemies are just damage sponges and you can get all kind of weapons that just do different numerical amounts of damage.

the bosses themselves- big staples and draws of zelda games- also work extremely differently. instead of having to leverage specific items to expose weak spots or having to fight in a specific manner to do damage, you are just asked to... do damage. even in totk's bosses, where sage abilities are most certainly helpful, the only boss i found to truly require a sage ability was the lighting temple's boss; the others i either hardly used the sage at all (i didn't use yunobo at all in the second phase of the fire temple boss and hardly had a need for tulin with the wind temple boss [esp considering i was using a 3-shot lynel bow to make the poor fucker a cakewalk]) or found that alternative solutions felt better, like resorting to splash fruit on repeat water temple fights instead of wrestling with having to activate and use sidon's ability. the sages are honestly fairly poor replacements for dungeon specific items.

this kind of causes botw/totk to play more like a poor man's dark souls or just like any other open world rpgish game. i don't play botw/totk for the experience of a zelda game, i play it because it's an open world game that i can walk around in for five minute before switching to something else because i liked something in that other game better.

the combat in botw/totk isnt designed in such a way that makes it feel good. mineru's mech is fucking dismal, but since it's just either shooting with a bow or attacking with one of three types of melee weapon with some timing for a dodge, it can get stale fast. it doesn't necessarily even feel good, since there's not enough variety for it to get really engaging. (this is def an uneven comparison, but elden ring's combat feels considerable better with the different dodges you can do and the amount of attack options you have with just one weapon, not to mention the amount of control you have over your general fighting style.) combat in botw/totk at hour 1 is the exact same as combat in botw/totk at hour 100, the only different being the amount of damage you do or how much of a beating you can take.

it just... the styles of botw/totk can't allow them to feel the same as older zelda games. the shift in style was clearly a good move to draw in series newbies and shake things up, but it comes at the caveat of making them feel distant from their predecessors and uncomfortably similar to other games like them. it's hard to avoid comparisons with elden ring when on the surface they are very similar games, one just feels more true to its core identity

this all is said without mentioning the way in which botw/totk lore feels almost dismissive of past series staples and seems intent on not looking back while also taking every fucking attempt to nudge you and say 'hey, remember that zelda game' and honestly all that shit does is make me want to play a different zelda game.

botw/totk seem altogether very desperate to distance themselves from past zelda games while also being unable to really tear itself from what came before and it just culminates in me spotting linebeck island on the map and going 'damn i miss linebeck' and turning the fucking game off to play phantom hourglass instead. say what you will about phantom hourglass, but it certainly handles its story progression and character development infinitely better than the game that lets you accidentally shatter the impact of the story by deciding to check out that cool temple in the distance of the depths

[three-bunnies-in-a-trenchcoat]

If I pretend really hard and close my eyes and turn down the volume whenever anyone is talking I can pretend I don't hate this game with everything in me

[watermelinoe]

saw someone describe the princess peach game as condescendingly simple and yeah that's why i was so disappointed with it

[kingsidonfanpage]

dude i have seen like 3 different videos of people having early-access totk gameplay and playing for ~15 minutes and i must say the urge to give in and watch is VERY STRONG but i have to exercise restraint bc i wanna be able to experience things fresh and new with the least amount of spoilers as possible

[clockwise-works]

he did not buy a new house to get away? he could still sleep in the hateno bed. did you even play totk? there’s implications that the new house is big enough for a family but your mind is too warped due to your hatred of totk right lol

Your right, my mistake. He didn't buy the house to get away, as he had no reason to get away for he doesn't live in Hateno in the first place. 😌

Also you're in my asks anonymously. You shield yourself with your anonymity out of fear, whereas I pulled my pants down and exposed myself fully with my take. We are not the same.

[kiddokori]

trailer was baller im not even sad about no bird <-lying

[smilesrobotlover]

I FOUND EVERY LIGHTROOT

[onewomancitadel]

I'll reserve judgement until I actually play TOTK but they did a story-heavy Zelda once which elevated the gameplay and its mechanics and it was great, without leaning into twee anime tropes

[goldensunset]

there are games that i enjoy playing more and there are games i enjoy thinking about more. sometimes the overall story and themes and blorbos are delightful but actually playing it is a little annoying so i just rotate it in my mind instead. sometimes i get absolutely sucked into the gameplay and the world and the experience for dozens or hundreds of hours and i enjoy listening to the soundtrack but it has little to no lasting impact on me as a person bc something in the story just failed to hit and that’s ok. both are good both are beloved. obviously the ideal piece of media is one i both enjoy actively consuming and thinking about but my mindset is that if a piece of media has any single good thing in it it’s a good piece of media. give me literally anything to work with and i’ll extract joy out of it. i’ve literally never played a game i didn’t like btw

[annieisyourfavourite]

i'm having a bit more fun with tears of the kingdom now that i'm further into it, but i do think it's worth saying that i think if any other company or series made a sequel that was this level of "copy and paste the first game, add a few things, and sell it for $70" they'd be eaten alive, not commended just because people like the new mechanic they added

[maccadeau]

btw as much as i love totk botw was superior