Tears of the Kingdom had me amazed for a good chunk of its playtime. Where I felt that Breath of the Wild pretty much only consistent of padding and alot of middling content at that I came away quite disappointed, not here though.
The open world progression was greatly improved by the mere addition of caves, the sky and slightly more involved feeling sidequests and the fuse system, while not really fun, at least alot better than the annoying weapon breaking from the predecessor.
Sure, there's still alot of shrines, way too many of them, all of them still samey looking and so incredibly easy that I can't help but scratch my head when hearing about friends and people on the internet having difficulties with them.
Then there's the story itself, which is still pretty terrible in terms of its mission structure (defeat different enemies at different locations to trigger a cutscene; find the three stone pillars and loot the chests inside them) but there's some fun content here and there that feels more worthwhile than any of the story missions from BotW (besides the one in the desert, which are also the standout here).
The dungeons are an improvement as well, still nowhere as good as the ones form the previous games but at least closer to being an enjoyable, with the desert dungeon being the standout and the water and wind temples being almost just as bad as the divine beasts from BotW. At least the bosses are cooler and the dungeon themes themselves are catchy. Only four (five) of them though? What a waste.
With how long the game has been in development and them reusing the map it's a bit odd how little effort was put into the design of the story progression – but that's okay, as the story itself is more involved and interesting than whatever they tried with BotW, but still not that special. Telling it via memories still seems like a cop out but I've gotten used to the formula so I can't say that I'm as disappointed as I was all those years ago with BotW.
You can probably already tell that alot of what I like about TotK I only really like because it's better than what BotW had to offer, even though I may still not like what is there entirely. BotW feels like an alpha version to this game in the least flattering way possible, which makes BotW entirely redundant.
The depths suck, the combat is still pretty terrible. There's definitely enough variety for the game to be fun but a little more couldn't have hurt. I don't know. I had fun here, alot more genuine fun than I had with BotW. Does that really make TotK a good game? idk
It's a 7 or an 8, giving it an 8 rn for the fun I had in my first 50 or so hours.
The open world progression was greatly improved by the mere addition of caves, the sky and slightly more involved feeling sidequests and the fuse system, while not really fun, at least alot better than the annoying weapon breaking from the predecessor.
Sure, there's still alot of shrines, way too many of them, all of them still samey looking and so incredibly easy that I can't help but scratch my head when hearing about friends and people on the internet having difficulties with them.
Then there's the story itself, which is still pretty terrible in terms of its mission structure (defeat different enemies at different locations to trigger a cutscene; find the three stone pillars and loot the chests inside them) but there's some fun content here and there that feels more worthwhile than any of the story missions from BotW (besides the one in the desert, which are also the standout here).
The dungeons are an improvement as well, still nowhere as good as the ones form the previous games but at least closer to being an enjoyable, with the desert dungeon being the standout and the water and wind temples being almost just as bad as the divine beasts from BotW. At least the bosses are cooler and the dungeon themes themselves are catchy. Only four (five) of them though? What a waste.
With how long the game has been in development and them reusing the map it's a bit odd how little effort was put into the design of the story progression – but that's okay, as the story itself is more involved and interesting than whatever they tried with BotW, but still not that special. Telling it via memories still seems like a cop out but I've gotten used to the formula so I can't say that I'm as disappointed as I was all those years ago with BotW.
You can probably already tell that alot of what I like about TotK I only really like because it's better than what BotW had to offer, even though I may still not like what is there entirely. BotW feels like an alpha version to this game in the least flattering way possible, which makes BotW entirely redundant.
The depths suck, the combat is still pretty terrible. There's definitely enough variety for the game to be fun but a little more couldn't have hurt. I don't know. I had fun here, alot more genuine fun than I had with BotW. Does that really make TotK a good game? idk
It's a 7 or an 8, giving it an 8 rn for the fun I had in my first 50 or so hours.