agilun
1 review liked by agilun
I struggle to articulate how I feel with this game. For the first few hours I was mildly disappointed with how same-y it felt to BOTW, even though BOTW is one of my favourite games of all time. After playing for about 8 hours, I think something clicked with how the game was intended to be played. I don't have much to say about the gameplay. In short, this is one of the finest open world games ever made and everything I could have hoped for. It iterates upon BOTW's foundation and adds an insane amount of new mechanics you can use in basically any way you want. I can't imagine how much time and effort went into this. In terms of gameplay, this is one of the deepest sandbox games you could play.
My biggest complaint with BOTW was the execution of the story. TOTK rectifies this in some areas. What I was not a fan of with BOTW was how unimportant the story felt, as most of the events were from the pre-calamity era with no effect on the present day. I found myself bored by these sections, as I already knew what had transpired before I saw those memories. I also really don’t care for the voice acting in both of these games, with one exception. TOTK's story, while far from perfect, feels a lot more active than BOTW. Another thing I preferred in TOTK's story is that Ganon is much more of a presence in this game. BOTW's Calamity Ganon is purely a force of nature, which I personally didn’t care for. However, Ganondorf in TOTK has much more presence throughout the narrative and I think is a much better antagonist than the calamity. His presence in the memories also made those more interesting this time around, as they set up the very real threat you are going to face as well as explaining Zelda’s whereabouts. He is also the one exception to my problems with the voice acting. I just love Matt Mercer’s performance in this game. However, compared to the previous 3D Zeldas the story is still just ok. The writing is much more flat than previous entries, and doing the memories before the other story beats kind of broke logic, as everyone is wondering where Zelda is while Link already knows the answer and just doesn't tell anyone.
The biggest reason TOTK is rated lower for me than BOTW is not the game’s fault at all. In fact, I’d say that TOTK is overall a better game in basically every way. BOTW just hit me at the perfect time and place, and was much more exciting when it came out than this was since it was the first to go in this direction. 9/10 - this is definitely winning game of the year.
My biggest complaint with BOTW was the execution of the story. TOTK rectifies this in some areas. What I was not a fan of with BOTW was how unimportant the story felt, as most of the events were from the pre-calamity era with no effect on the present day. I found myself bored by these sections, as I already knew what had transpired before I saw those memories. I also really don’t care for the voice acting in both of these games, with one exception. TOTK's story, while far from perfect, feels a lot more active than BOTW. Another thing I preferred in TOTK's story is that Ganon is much more of a presence in this game. BOTW's Calamity Ganon is purely a force of nature, which I personally didn’t care for. However, Ganondorf in TOTK has much more presence throughout the narrative and I think is a much better antagonist than the calamity. His presence in the memories also made those more interesting this time around, as they set up the very real threat you are going to face as well as explaining Zelda’s whereabouts. He is also the one exception to my problems with the voice acting. I just love Matt Mercer’s performance in this game. However, compared to the previous 3D Zeldas the story is still just ok. The writing is much more flat than previous entries, and doing the memories before the other story beats kind of broke logic, as everyone is wondering where Zelda is while Link already knows the answer and just doesn't tell anyone.
The biggest reason TOTK is rated lower for me than BOTW is not the game’s fault at all. In fact, I’d say that TOTK is overall a better game in basically every way. BOTW just hit me at the perfect time and place, and was much more exciting when it came out than this was since it was the first to go in this direction. 9/10 - this is definitely winning game of the year.