Higamortos
1 review liked by Higamortos
When Breath of the Wild came out it felt like it immediately redefined open world games forever and set the standard for what they should strive to be. As nintendo’s first open world game, its insane how close they came to perfection. It had its share of problems and though a complete experience on its own, it definitely felt like a foundation to explore more ideas.
Following up such a huge, absolutely lauded game with a direct sequel is not a small task and the announcement of it being the same map sounded like a risky decision. But its a decision that paid off and fundamentally this game feels like a bigger second course for botw fans in particular and makes botw look almost small by comparison.
On top of being ‘more breath of the wild’, tears of the kingdom doubles down on the first games’ sandbox style, putting the tools in your hand to experiment and explore the changed landscape of hyrule. Totk feels like what breath of the wild wanted to be which is mad, all of its new additions feel completely natural, with its caves and crevices, pits, sky islands (which granted, do get repetitive) and lived-in settlements that have changed with the years. Part of the joy of having the same map as well as the same inhabitants is being able to see how they have evolved, how people have grown, how they address and interact with link and what new situations they have found themselves in.
I thought for a while that the novelty of just more breath of the wild style gameplay and exploration would wear itself down for me but it didn’t and there’s going to be a million video essays covering why that might be. Ultimately a lot of it is down to the fantastic game mechanics and how it functions as a sandbox with limitless opportunities. The intricately detailed world has those 3 wholly unique layers which seem to play into each other and compliment each other, with the sky feeling open, free and puzzle oriented, in stark contrast to the depths which are mysterious, creepy and atmospheric and feel more like a test of survival. One novelty that did start to lose steam was lighting up the depths and trying to map it out due to the fact that it is so massive. Something more contained or spaced out into sections like the sky islands would be to its benefit but they really wanted every major landmass to reflect the surface, with rivers and caverns above ground representing tall mountainous structures in the depths. This is a very very cool idea in theory and its an amazing thing to uncover a mine underneath a city or various secrets lurking under landmarks above ground - but after the first few times it does start to feel like a bit of a chore because of how much more empty it feels than the surface and how much more limited the things you can find are - enemies, zoanite, poes, bargainer statues and ruins, that’s about it. This would be fine were the depths smaller, as the content is there, it just doesn’t need to feel as stretched thin and tedious as it ended up feeling for me personally.
On the other hand I love the sky islands and felt like it was a joy to move between them and solve its various puzzles. They feel almost like mini platforming challenges and figuring out how to move a crystal or traverse a great distance between islands was always great fun. But, unfortunately, I do think they are too few and they are a little underutilised - where the depths are too big, the sky islands are too small. There’s some awesome ideas in there with things like low gravity, creating unique zonai contraptions and exploring giant floating orbs, each with their own unique solution and approach. But the solution is always a one off thing that gave me a kick and then made me go ‘oh is that it’, because the sky islands look so cool and feel so fun to move around in but once you do that one single puzzle they feel redundant and there’s little reason to ever come back except for like, dispensers and materials I suppose? Nothing all that substantial. Expanding the world beyond the surface is such an awesome idea but the execution could have been better. Thankfully they make up for this with the games’ most significant additions - the new temples and caverns and creating your own zonai devices.
While totk does come with its own unique little problems it does manage to address many of those that I found in botw - notably the divine beasts and the shrines, which are a big step up from botw (though i’ll clarify I never actively disliked their equivalents in botw). The new temples, the story and the overall tone/vibe are a real improvement over botw, feeling more impactful, more intelligent and more interesting throughout. While less of an absolute tonal whiplash than say, ocarina and majora’s mask, I do find that tears of the kingdom is slightly darker and more unique, I wasn’t asking for a lot to change from botw but the more threatening and fantastical nature of it was something I was really hoping for. On top of that its significantly more grandiose and cinematic in my opinion, with its setpieces, cutscenes, dungeons and boss battles feeling bigger in scale and stronger in both theming and in their sheer beauty. Story and mystery play a much bigger part here and I like how you feel as if you are following in zelda’s footsteps. While story has never been a major appeal of the zelda series, I appreciate and respect this game for its story, because its more than just serviceable and comes with genuinely epic moments and a surprising twist or two. While a little hampered by patchy voice acting, mild repetitiveness in its writing and a slight lack of anything majorly new, the narrative and moment to moment beats are pretty damn strong.
This being said, the gameplay and unhindered exploration of totk is immaculate and the real focus here. Traversing the world and expressing yourself in how you play has never been this good, the variety of things to find and do is pretty much unparalleled and the sheer amount of content is mind boggling as I wanted to be everywhere at once and its hard to even know where to start. This being said there’s a fantastic ‘flow’ to totk’s gameplay as I found myself venturing toward one landmark or objective and getting sidetracked by something else like a shrine, secret, npc or enemy encampment. I might make it to my original destination eventually but the route is almost never straightforward because this is a game that seems to want you to get distracted and immerse yourself in all there is to find. On top of that its filled with surprises and the emergent gameplay style creates a unique experience for everyone so sharing how I approached a certain area, puzzle or objective compared to my friends was awesome. On that note shrines are more freeform and open to personal expression than ever because almost all of them have more than one single obvious solution. By using ultrahand, recall, fuse and ascend in creative ways you can ‘cheese’ almost any puzzle, except it isn’t really cheesing in a way because its clear that’s what the devs wanted, they want you to go out of your way to experiment and find a solution that works for you even if its not the most conventional and I absolutely adore that.
Dungeons all find ways of lending themselves to this emergent and expressive style of gameplay too, especially when compared to the divine beasts of botw. I particularly loved the gerudo temple and fire temple for their awesome puzzle solving and multi-layered, inventive layouts. Every dungeon excels at one thing - the water temple has the best boss, the wind temple has by far the best leadup with its platforming, the lightning temple has the best puzzles and the fire temple has the best overall layout and is the most fun to explore. They do have some issues such as them all being too short and a bit too simple and though the bosses are all fun and creative, they’re all weak as hell. That’s not to say there aren’t some relatively tough fights in this game though, on top of the returning lynels we also have gleeoks which are a very different sort of fight and I really enjoyed scrapping with them.
By far this game’s biggest highlight for me was the main story’s last few hours with mineru and the final battle with ganondorf and his army. Without saying too much the section with mineru felt like a great way to round things off and the ‘factories’ in the depths felt a lot like the great sky island again since it forces you to get creative with how you transport key items. The final battle is really impressive and grand and put a big stupid smile on my face, the back and forth flurry rushes and visual excitement of the whole thing gave me such a rush and then its finale is so epic and emotional, its just fucking awesome. Compared to botw’s final boss this is a massive improvement and (if so) feels like a worthy send off to this era of one of the greatest game series of all time. God I loved the ending.
Its crazy how they did breath of the wild but with tons more to see and do, its a game (along with botw) that will be timeless and span generations in the same way as something like ocarina or mario 64. There’s some subjective things i’d personally change like making durability a little less oppressive, removing shield surf durability damage and condensing the depths down by a lot but ultimately, this is the type of phenomenal sequel that is a rare treat and a joy to experience and be a part of whilst the hype is alive. The smallest quality of life changes make the biggest difference here and that’s only going to help even more when I inevitably come to replay this sometime. Certified masterpiece mate.
Following up such a huge, absolutely lauded game with a direct sequel is not a small task and the announcement of it being the same map sounded like a risky decision. But its a decision that paid off and fundamentally this game feels like a bigger second course for botw fans in particular and makes botw look almost small by comparison.
On top of being ‘more breath of the wild’, tears of the kingdom doubles down on the first games’ sandbox style, putting the tools in your hand to experiment and explore the changed landscape of hyrule. Totk feels like what breath of the wild wanted to be which is mad, all of its new additions feel completely natural, with its caves and crevices, pits, sky islands (which granted, do get repetitive) and lived-in settlements that have changed with the years. Part of the joy of having the same map as well as the same inhabitants is being able to see how they have evolved, how people have grown, how they address and interact with link and what new situations they have found themselves in.
I thought for a while that the novelty of just more breath of the wild style gameplay and exploration would wear itself down for me but it didn’t and there’s going to be a million video essays covering why that might be. Ultimately a lot of it is down to the fantastic game mechanics and how it functions as a sandbox with limitless opportunities. The intricately detailed world has those 3 wholly unique layers which seem to play into each other and compliment each other, with the sky feeling open, free and puzzle oriented, in stark contrast to the depths which are mysterious, creepy and atmospheric and feel more like a test of survival. One novelty that did start to lose steam was lighting up the depths and trying to map it out due to the fact that it is so massive. Something more contained or spaced out into sections like the sky islands would be to its benefit but they really wanted every major landmass to reflect the surface, with rivers and caverns above ground representing tall mountainous structures in the depths. This is a very very cool idea in theory and its an amazing thing to uncover a mine underneath a city or various secrets lurking under landmarks above ground - but after the first few times it does start to feel like a bit of a chore because of how much more empty it feels than the surface and how much more limited the things you can find are - enemies, zoanite, poes, bargainer statues and ruins, that’s about it. This would be fine were the depths smaller, as the content is there, it just doesn’t need to feel as stretched thin and tedious as it ended up feeling for me personally.
On the other hand I love the sky islands and felt like it was a joy to move between them and solve its various puzzles. They feel almost like mini platforming challenges and figuring out how to move a crystal or traverse a great distance between islands was always great fun. But, unfortunately, I do think they are too few and they are a little underutilised - where the depths are too big, the sky islands are too small. There’s some awesome ideas in there with things like low gravity, creating unique zonai contraptions and exploring giant floating orbs, each with their own unique solution and approach. But the solution is always a one off thing that gave me a kick and then made me go ‘oh is that it’, because the sky islands look so cool and feel so fun to move around in but once you do that one single puzzle they feel redundant and there’s little reason to ever come back except for like, dispensers and materials I suppose? Nothing all that substantial. Expanding the world beyond the surface is such an awesome idea but the execution could have been better. Thankfully they make up for this with the games’ most significant additions - the new temples and caverns and creating your own zonai devices.
While totk does come with its own unique little problems it does manage to address many of those that I found in botw - notably the divine beasts and the shrines, which are a big step up from botw (though i’ll clarify I never actively disliked their equivalents in botw). The new temples, the story and the overall tone/vibe are a real improvement over botw, feeling more impactful, more intelligent and more interesting throughout. While less of an absolute tonal whiplash than say, ocarina and majora’s mask, I do find that tears of the kingdom is slightly darker and more unique, I wasn’t asking for a lot to change from botw but the more threatening and fantastical nature of it was something I was really hoping for. On top of that its significantly more grandiose and cinematic in my opinion, with its setpieces, cutscenes, dungeons and boss battles feeling bigger in scale and stronger in both theming and in their sheer beauty. Story and mystery play a much bigger part here and I like how you feel as if you are following in zelda’s footsteps. While story has never been a major appeal of the zelda series, I appreciate and respect this game for its story, because its more than just serviceable and comes with genuinely epic moments and a surprising twist or two. While a little hampered by patchy voice acting, mild repetitiveness in its writing and a slight lack of anything majorly new, the narrative and moment to moment beats are pretty damn strong.
This being said, the gameplay and unhindered exploration of totk is immaculate and the real focus here. Traversing the world and expressing yourself in how you play has never been this good, the variety of things to find and do is pretty much unparalleled and the sheer amount of content is mind boggling as I wanted to be everywhere at once and its hard to even know where to start. This being said there’s a fantastic ‘flow’ to totk’s gameplay as I found myself venturing toward one landmark or objective and getting sidetracked by something else like a shrine, secret, npc or enemy encampment. I might make it to my original destination eventually but the route is almost never straightforward because this is a game that seems to want you to get distracted and immerse yourself in all there is to find. On top of that its filled with surprises and the emergent gameplay style creates a unique experience for everyone so sharing how I approached a certain area, puzzle or objective compared to my friends was awesome. On that note shrines are more freeform and open to personal expression than ever because almost all of them have more than one single obvious solution. By using ultrahand, recall, fuse and ascend in creative ways you can ‘cheese’ almost any puzzle, except it isn’t really cheesing in a way because its clear that’s what the devs wanted, they want you to go out of your way to experiment and find a solution that works for you even if its not the most conventional and I absolutely adore that.
Dungeons all find ways of lending themselves to this emergent and expressive style of gameplay too, especially when compared to the divine beasts of botw. I particularly loved the gerudo temple and fire temple for their awesome puzzle solving and multi-layered, inventive layouts. Every dungeon excels at one thing - the water temple has the best boss, the wind temple has by far the best leadup with its platforming, the lightning temple has the best puzzles and the fire temple has the best overall layout and is the most fun to explore. They do have some issues such as them all being too short and a bit too simple and though the bosses are all fun and creative, they’re all weak as hell. That’s not to say there aren’t some relatively tough fights in this game though, on top of the returning lynels we also have gleeoks which are a very different sort of fight and I really enjoyed scrapping with them.
By far this game’s biggest highlight for me was the main story’s last few hours with mineru and the final battle with ganondorf and his army. Without saying too much the section with mineru felt like a great way to round things off and the ‘factories’ in the depths felt a lot like the great sky island again since it forces you to get creative with how you transport key items. The final battle is really impressive and grand and put a big stupid smile on my face, the back and forth flurry rushes and visual excitement of the whole thing gave me such a rush and then its finale is so epic and emotional, its just fucking awesome. Compared to botw’s final boss this is a massive improvement and (if so) feels like a worthy send off to this era of one of the greatest game series of all time. God I loved the ending.
Its crazy how they did breath of the wild but with tons more to see and do, its a game (along with botw) that will be timeless and span generations in the same way as something like ocarina or mario 64. There’s some subjective things i’d personally change like making durability a little less oppressive, removing shield surf durability damage and condensing the depths down by a lot but ultimately, this is the type of phenomenal sequel that is a rare treat and a joy to experience and be a part of whilst the hype is alive. The smallest quality of life changes make the biggest difference here and that’s only going to help even more when I inevitably come to replay this sometime. Certified masterpiece mate.