A mediocre title that only rarely steps out from under the shadow of its predecessor. There isn't nearly enough depth to the new content for it to carry this absolute behemoth of a game, and I was bored to the point of not wanting to continue by the time I'd reached the halfway mark.
I remember playing BoTW and being shocked that someone had finally figured out the open world formula that Ubisoft had been trying to crack for over a decade. ToTK never had that moment for me. The opening few hours of the game range from interesting to absolutely awful - The new building system is at first intriguing, but also fiddly and painful to work with. Shrines are still here and still exactly the same, just with new puzzles and now there are more of them. The chasms lead to an exciting new area that held my interest for a very long time - Until I realized the resources you got there were only really useful there, and that you can easily clear the entire game without even noticing that area exists.
The story also deserves special mention. I was at first interested in this game having more of a story focus. It was obvious from the previews that there were more cutscenes, and it looked like some events might actually be happening as you played the game, rather than all the story having already happened. This is not the case. Once again you run around collecting memories of things that have already happened to learn what the story of the game is, and once again the final boss is content to sit in the middle of the map doing absolutely nothing until you go to fight it. The English voice cast is almost universally terrible. Ganondorf gets some room to have a character (His VA is actually doing a voice!) while everyone else badly fakes a British accent and just kind of talks at you conversationally no matter how dramatic their current circumstances might be. Much of the game's voiced dialogue also doesn't read well - It doesn't read naturally and the voiceover is frequently stilted. I'm not sure if this is the result of poor translation or if it's just being exacerbated by poor voice direction, but it's bizarre to see in a AAA title from a major studio.
Regarding the new mechanics: BoTW had a largely intuitive and quick-to-use set of abilities. It was easy to snap between whatever you might need, use it quickly, and get back to the game. ToTK has a couple abilities like this, but the main focus of the game is on Ultrahand, the ability that lets you pick up pieces of objects and glue them together. This power is basically the defining feature of the game - It's the only major change to Link's moveset from BoTW, its use is required to solve most of the game's puzzles, and nearly every shrine will somehow use Ultrahand.
Ultrahand is not quick and snappy to use. On its own that might be fine, I can understand wanting to slow the pace of the game down a little to make people really consider what they're doing. In practice, with the frequency Ultrahand needs to be used, it's a pace-murdering pain. Often I had figured out a puzzle, knew exactly what I needed to do, and then had to spend several minutes painstakingly assembling the solution one piece at a time. I think if the Ultrahand falls flat for you, there's very little in this game that will salvage your experience.
Regarding performance, the game being stuck on the Switch does it no favors. It's often hard to make out what an object is, with small objects turning into a smear of colored pixels you kind of just have to identify based off vibes. Panning your camera in a circle in almost any location will cause framerate drops. The game absolutely collapses when you have more than four or five enemies on-screen at once. Memories this time require you to find a small pool of water in a large area, something that would be manageable in any modern game, but which is made a challenge in ToTK due to the game's pitiful draw distance making the pool impossible to distinguish from the terrain if it's more than ten feet away. If I see a video of this game posted it's almost immediately obvious whether it's running on an emulator or if it's footage from the Switch, just because the PC can hold a stable framerate.
Overall, I would not recommend ToTK. It has a few standout moments, and I'm sure it's going to continue to top sales charts for many months, but to me the formula is now completely stale. It's a derivative experience that doesn't do enough to stand out from its predecessor.
I remember playing BoTW and being shocked that someone had finally figured out the open world formula that Ubisoft had been trying to crack for over a decade. ToTK never had that moment for me. The opening few hours of the game range from interesting to absolutely awful - The new building system is at first intriguing, but also fiddly and painful to work with. Shrines are still here and still exactly the same, just with new puzzles and now there are more of them. The chasms lead to an exciting new area that held my interest for a very long time - Until I realized the resources you got there were only really useful there, and that you can easily clear the entire game without even noticing that area exists.
The story also deserves special mention. I was at first interested in this game having more of a story focus. It was obvious from the previews that there were more cutscenes, and it looked like some events might actually be happening as you played the game, rather than all the story having already happened. This is not the case. Once again you run around collecting memories of things that have already happened to learn what the story of the game is, and once again the final boss is content to sit in the middle of the map doing absolutely nothing until you go to fight it. The English voice cast is almost universally terrible. Ganondorf gets some room to have a character (His VA is actually doing a voice!) while everyone else badly fakes a British accent and just kind of talks at you conversationally no matter how dramatic their current circumstances might be. Much of the game's voiced dialogue also doesn't read well - It doesn't read naturally and the voiceover is frequently stilted. I'm not sure if this is the result of poor translation or if it's just being exacerbated by poor voice direction, but it's bizarre to see in a AAA title from a major studio.
Regarding the new mechanics: BoTW had a largely intuitive and quick-to-use set of abilities. It was easy to snap between whatever you might need, use it quickly, and get back to the game. ToTK has a couple abilities like this, but the main focus of the game is on Ultrahand, the ability that lets you pick up pieces of objects and glue them together. This power is basically the defining feature of the game - It's the only major change to Link's moveset from BoTW, its use is required to solve most of the game's puzzles, and nearly every shrine will somehow use Ultrahand.
Ultrahand is not quick and snappy to use. On its own that might be fine, I can understand wanting to slow the pace of the game down a little to make people really consider what they're doing. In practice, with the frequency Ultrahand needs to be used, it's a pace-murdering pain. Often I had figured out a puzzle, knew exactly what I needed to do, and then had to spend several minutes painstakingly assembling the solution one piece at a time. I think if the Ultrahand falls flat for you, there's very little in this game that will salvage your experience.
Regarding performance, the game being stuck on the Switch does it no favors. It's often hard to make out what an object is, with small objects turning into a smear of colored pixels you kind of just have to identify based off vibes. Panning your camera in a circle in almost any location will cause framerate drops. The game absolutely collapses when you have more than four or five enemies on-screen at once. Memories this time require you to find a small pool of water in a large area, something that would be manageable in any modern game, but which is made a challenge in ToTK due to the game's pitiful draw distance making the pool impossible to distinguish from the terrain if it's more than ten feet away. If I see a video of this game posted it's almost immediately obvious whether it's running on an emulator or if it's footage from the Switch, just because the PC can hold a stable framerate.
Overall, I would not recommend ToTK. It has a few standout moments, and I'm sure it's going to continue to top sales charts for many months, but to me the formula is now completely stale. It's a derivative experience that doesn't do enough to stand out from its predecessor.