I don't think I'm ever going to get around to finishing this game, so now's as good a time as any to do a write-up.

Breath of the Wild is my favorite game. It got me back into gaming after putting it down after a few years, and back into Nintendo games after not caring for nearly a decade. I was excited as anyone for Tears of the Kingdom. The early marketing was excellent, presenting an ominous, Majora-esque asset flip of the more melancholic BotW. I imagined deep crevices carved into the ground, exhuming all sorts of long-dormant horrors, forever altering the Hyrule with which I was familiar. I had faith that the long development time would be used to add all sorts of interesting content and well-designed dungeons.

My initial impression of the game was good. I enjoyed the tutorial island. Helping the overpacked Korok get to his friend was cute. On the surface, one of the first caves I found was the Majora tree stump cave. I remember feeling excited by the Japanese aesthetic for the shrine housing the piece of Fierce Deity armor, and wondered what other kinds of ancient architecture I'd find. Diving into The Depths for the first time was thrilling.

Disappointments, however, quickly crept in. The oddly specific over-packed Korok scenario quickly became contrived as I found dozens more. The tutorial island turned out to be the most interesting sky island by far, as the others were sparse and often copied multiple times. The tree stump cave turned out to be one of the few interesting caves, with most of the others largely using the same mossy aesthetic, with the same Horriblins and the same Japanese architecture housing the same BotW DLC armor. The Depths turned out to have a dearth of interesting content, my time largely spent stumbling around in the dark, avoiding the same enemy camps that absolutely litter the surface.

My biggest problem with TotK is how much it mindlessly copies from BotW. For BotW, the developers went back to the drawing board, and thoughtfully reconsidered all of the rote Zelda tropes that had accumulated in the series since Majora's Mask, like so many fleas. All of the pieces fit together. Take the memory system, for example. For BotW, the developers smartly crafted a smattering of nonessential vignettes, where the order in which you found them was not important, because it suited the open world structure of the game. Anyone with a brain can see that this structure does not fit the essential, linear story that TotK wants to tell. It felt like watching a movie with its scenes out of order. It also leads to big problems like Link spending all his time "trying to find Zelda," when he already knows exactly where she is, but doesn't bother letting anyone else know.

No one held a gun to Aonuma's head and said he had to use the same damn Korok seed inventory system, or shrine health and stamina system, or combat durability system, or memory-based narrative, or music. BotW was great in part because of how new everything felt. But Aonuma's team is already resting on its laurels, and I fear BotW's revolutionary template is already ossified convention.

The worst is how TotK handles BotW's map. Many previous points of interest are utterly devoid of content, including Thundra Plateau, Gut Check Rock, Hyrule Castle Ruins, and The Forgotten Temple. Areas with affecting environmental storytelling in BotW like Fort Hateno are downgraded to dumps littered with ugly brown-gray sky island slabs. I was baffled and offended when I made my way to Akkala Citadel, only to find an inexplicably generic monster cave where the citadel entrance should have been exposed. They really should have made sure there was enough to do on the surface before bothering with the dull-as-dishwater Depths.

Speaking of environmental storytelling, how bad is TotK's? What's the point of introducing another heretofore unmentioned technologically advanced ancient civilization? What happened to the Shiekah tech from BotW, including the army of laser-spewing spider robots and Divine Beasts that devastated the countryside for 100 years? I don't think they're even mentioned once. It almost feels like The Calamity didn't even happen. This created a huge disconnect from the world for me. All the ruins that felt so meaningful to explore in BotW felt like they belonged in a different game in TotK.

I haven't mentioned Ultrahand until now, because it felt largely superfluous to my experience with the game. On the tutorial island, I learned to my great disappointment that walking more than 50 yards from a boat I'd built to cross the first lake caused it to despawn. I was further let down after my first exhilarating flight on a wing part was cut short by the extremely stingy 30-second use time limit.

Ultrahand is barely integrated into the game. It feels like someone took the building mechanic from Garry's Mod, shoved it into BotW, and dumped a bunch of Lego parts everywhere. The game almost never requires its use outside of scripted events like the Death Mountain approach or boring green crystal sky island shrines; it's often faster and more effective to deal with the game's many enemies using the vanilla BotW combat.

So many elements of the game disincentivize its use. The building mechanic itself is finicky and time-consuming, and the distance and time limits are even more demoralizing. I was lucky to find auto-build early in the game, but the heavy Zonaite cost kept me from using it much. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered if going in to The Depths was fun, but mindlessly mining Zonaite felt like the worst kind of grindy MMO filler. I think the biggest tell is how many people complained when Nintendo removed the duplication glitch from the first build of the game. I normally side with Nintendo in these instances, but here, I think it exposes just how unfun and stingy the game is with resources.

I'm just scratching the surface of TotK's serious flaws. The "dungeons" are lackluster, and their "press these 5 or so buttons in any order" design uninspired. The repetitive sage cutscenes after the fairly enjoyable but too-easy boss fights are pathetic. Shrines are often just tutorials for Zonai parts, and can often be cheesed in unsatisfying ways. Sage powers are horribly implemented.

I'll balance all the negativity I just wrote by saying that I recognize that TotK isn't a bad game. If I hadn't played BotW, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more. Maybe my expectations for the sequel of my favorite game were too high. And there are truly excellent moments that incentivized me to push through all the middling content, like launching off the roofs of sky ships into the eye of a snow storm, or exploring the super interesting Gerudo underground shelter, or fighting a Boss Bokoblin squad for the first time. But I can't deny that I resented most of the 100+ hour grind I put into this game, and I regret ever buying it.

The Pikmin series is like a downward slope to me. The very first game is such a unique thing, and no other game afterwards tries to recapture the feeling in either the story or explorable world. Pikmin 1 is a desolate lonely game that keeps you on edge for the entirety of its runtime. There were times where I rushed through the first half of this game just so I could have time to relax and explore the Distant Spring. By doing that I was rewarded with an optional boss encounter. The creatures are great. The music is great. The gameplay is simple but endlessly replayable. No other game does it better.

Still a very good game but probably the weakest out of the main 3D Zelda titles. I think the problem with this game is so many things you do to progress your character involve several tedious little tasks. If you want a better inventory, you better slowly travel all those Koroks to their destination, if you want to not get one-shot by all the enemies, you need to grind out materials. Want more health and stamina? Well you better find and finish as many shrines as possible. All these things would not be such a big deal on their own, but they started to add up as i played through the game. It also would help if the building mechanic was just a bit more consistent and easier to handle. After awhile all those little grindy things you do, every time you need to help a dude fix his sign, and every little contraption you have to put together just feels like chores. Another very odd thing I noticed is that through the dragon tears flashbacks, the game can literally spoil its own story?? Like the flashbacks in botw made sense to be out of order, because they were not telling you the story, but simply adding context to what was told in the introduction. This time around, they just are the main way the story is delivered, which has no reason to be out of order. Again, I want to reiterate that this is not a bad game. It is actually very fun in small doses, and looks and plays as best it possibly could given the hardware; I just wish it felt more consistently entertaining. I beat the 4 main dungeons, did a bunch of shrines, and explored the open world a pretty good amount. Eventually I will come back and finish the game.

My opinion changed a lot the more I played this game.

When I first started it, I was completely hooked. The beginning sky island area is well designed and gets you familiar with the new cool abilities that I used much more then the ones in BOTW. The graphics and size of the world are also super impressive for being a Switch title.

Once I finished the tutorial area which took around 5 hours, everything started going downhill. The game is basically an exact copy of BOTW. The enemies are identical with the only new ones being these small robots that have replaced guardians and some dragon mini boss which I didn't bother fighting. Armor sets are also the same, there are a few new additions but to get many of them is a real chore. The main negative is that the map and story are pretty much identical to BOTW. The whole sky island I found to be a really cool concept but there's almost none of that in the rest of the game. That tutorial sky island is the largest with none of the rest being as remotely interesting anywhere. They're all very tiny with nothing on them and no reason to visit them except shrines. Another addition was an entire underground world which sounds cool and again is quite technically impressive for the Switch but after 20 minutes I decided to never go there again unless I needed to progress the story. It's all empty copy pasted land with nothing special and no reason to explore it. This leaves the main land left and as I've repeatedly said, it is an exact copy of BOTW I keep finding the need to say it over and over since I'm still amazed at how little they decided to change for this hyped $90 game. I played the shit out of BOTW in 2019 and even after 6 years so many things felt familiar, practically nothing surprised me in my playthrough. The story is very generic and worse then BOTW imo. Once again you find 4 sages then gain their powers to defeat Ganon; only this time the sages are younger kid versions who were made into anime personalities for some reason. The dungeons I found to be a downgrade and as they were much easier than BOTW, that goes for the shrines as well; they were still quite enjoyable and my favorite part of the game. I really thought I'd spend a lot of time on this game especially with the increased price tag but that was not the case. In BOTW I spend around 150hrs with 100% completion, in this game I did all shrines, a few uninteresting side quests, and the story picking up whatever korok seeds I find on my way which brought me to around 65 hours with no urge to do anything else but put it back on the shelf. Why play anymore when I pretty much experienced all of it already in BOTW? I'm very tired of this new Zelda formula and would love to see it go back to its core.

The one thing I did quite enjoy with the story was the ending. The Ganon boss fight was solid, one of the best in Zelda and a huge improvement from the BOTW final boss. The ending cinematic was also amazing. Seeing that caught me off guard, it made me wish they focused on story more as it showed they are capable. I was impressed that there could be such epic cinematics in a Zelda game and wish there was more of it throughout the story rather then using the most bare bones RPG story that goes all the way back to Final Fantasy on the NES. This game has no reason for existing. A sequel like this was not needed, this felt much more of a quality of life update with new sandbox stuff and that's about it. This was not a GOTY 2023 contender to me.

I don't get the praise for this game, the high ratings are completely out of proportion. While it might be a great game for new players, it is a super boring and tedious "sequel" for someone who already finished BOTW (multiple times). Note that I put "sequel" in quotes, because in reality TOTK is more of a cheap copy of BOTW with a few new gimmicks.

After the first half hour, which you actually get to spend on a new "map", it quickly becomes clear that the creators of the game want you to explore the entire old map again and solve boring shrine puzzles again. Sorry, but it ain't no fun to do it a second time. By the time I returned to the ground from the Sky Islands, I was pretty much burnt out on the game. I really have zero interest in unlocking the entire map again, it's just tedious and no fun at all.

I couldn't bring myself to finish the game and watched the rest of it in a YouTube video on fast-forward for the sake of completeness. What can I say? I'm very glad I did, because I would have been bored to death with the rest of the game. I'm so relieved that Baldur's Gate won all the major awards last year, TOTK didn't deserve any of them. A classic case of this could have been a DLC. At least I didn't have to spend any money on my copy, as the game was given to me as a gift.

Resources are now even more conveniently placed than they were. Before, if there was snow you'd find chilis nearby. Getting into a dangerous place? Here are some weapons. But now everything is there for you. This rock that previously was just lying around is now something you can use to build yourself a weapon. The bombs that were previously part of Link's device are now an item that only grows for Link to use it. Elemental items now are there to build elemental weapons. Arrows, berries... There are more than ever, because it's Link's only way to do things that he could previously do just fine. The world as a resource, not as a place.

The exaggerated gamification of everything that was previously in the game doesn't help either. You found a new place? Don't worry here's the name and your "New discovery" title so that you feel like you accomplished something. The two hundred wells across the map are no more than a different way to provide you with more resources. The minerals you find? They're another currency you exchange for more items. The poe, which are lost souls that you find in the underground? More currency to make your life easier there. The towers? They're not a a place to conquer anymore, but a chore: do this and that, talk to this person, get in from below. The batteries, wings, even the pots, are more items in your inventory that you get from a fucking gacha. It's the carrot and stick, clearer than ever. Congratulations, you are a donkey.

Sure, the new mechanics are great by themselves. But what can you do with Rewind that you could not with Stasis and some imagination? Did we really need Ascend in a game where you can climb virtually any surface? I get that being able to build giant mechs with auto-aim is super cool but how does that translate to the actual world and your interaction with it? When, realistically, are you going to need that and why? More importantly, how does the game give you the pieces needed to build that? Let me answer this last one: conveniently placed items in a clearly defined zone that you can recognise it from far away and a fucking gashapon. And only Link can make use of them. Where's the illusion of a world and the never-seen-before ecosystem? Which kind of place works like that? This is not a world anymore, it's a power fantasy. As imaginative as the new mechanics can be, they don't work in the context of the game because they were never necessary to begin with. They're the definition of over-engineering: trying to fix something that was never broken in order to justify the existence of a product that no one asked for and serves no purpose.

If you look at each element by itself it's hard to argue that they're not fun and entertaining because it's small little challenges and rewards that move you forward built on top of well made systems that have already been proven to work in a full game, but is that really enough? Everything in the game works in a vacuum because, in the end, everything is based well-thought, well-built mechanics on top of something that we found marvelous and fascinating when we first experienced this in 2017. But where's the charm? Where's the spark? Where's the wonder? Is there any real thought behind it other than mindlessly expanding what we previously saw? What's really new to experience or how do our new ways of interaction make Hyrule seem fascinating and challenging again?

Not only is it greatly flawed but, fundamentally, TOTK feels the same as BOTW. And thus it doesn't.

I have been in love with the Pikmin series since day one, being absolutely glued to the screen trying to help Olimar find all his ship pieces, which turned into finding treasure pieces for the Boss, and eventually into various fruits for a dying Koppai planet. I was pretty satisfied with the Pikmin series ending at 3, but I know the online community was especially loud about wanting a 4th one, and to be honest, I was a little curious where they would go with the series after 3, so hey, why not check it out?

I went in fully knowing that this era of Nintendo is no longer what I loved growing up with, but I still wanted to go in with an open mind, and hopefully be happy to find it keeping to its core. But after finishing the game, I couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied and just very… odd about the whole experience. Pikmin 4 isn’t bad, especially compared to other games on the Switch, Pikmin 4 is actually quite good in comparison! But after thinking about it for a little bit, I think I can sum up why I wasn’t quite as happy with Pikmin 4 as I was in the past Pikmin games.

Assistance

Pikmin 4 is too kind to you, so kind in fact, that it takes away the original enjoyment I had with the game. Pikmin 1 & 2, and Pikmin 3 on the Wii U all are games that create an environment with a mission that you need to complete, sounds easy enough, right? Well, no. The whole point of Pikmin is to complete your goal with literally EVERYTHING in the world out against you. It’s you, this tiny little man not even the height of a GameCube disc, and your funny little fellas, out against literally EVERYTHING. Pikmin started as a series called Adam & Eve where you had to control an eventual 100-person tribe of people with their own freewill and get them to complete tasks for you. You were essentially supposed to play God, with your little people as your followers.

I see SO many people complain about how it seems like the pikmin in Pikmin 1 are completely braindead or go against your wishes in order to jump into the water, fall off bridges/ledges, or run right into fire walls, and I can not stress this enough; That. Is. The. Goddamn. POINT. The Pikmin are supposed to be annoying, they’re supposed to go against your wishes, because to put it bluntly, Olimar is finding these creatures and making them into his blooming slaves. They follow Olimar because of the light on his helmet, but in the end, they still have their own wants and desires, and THAT is what makes Pikmin an incredibly amazing and insanely unique game never before seen. It’s a game where you have to fight against nature WITH nature in order to complete your goal.

What Pikmin 4 does that ended up taking the enjoyment away from me was that instead of making it a game of nature fighting AGAINST you, it’s now a game of puzzles that helps GIVE you that push towards completing your goal. Gone is that challenge. Gone is that struggle. Instead, you can rest easy in knowing the game will help you in any way it possibly can. The base is too far, making carrying items back difficult from environmental aspects (water, walls, unbuilt bridges, etc) or there being too many enemies no longer an issue, you can just move the base now. The fear of losing your Pikmin and being low on a certain type is gone, as Oatchi, as undeniably cute as he is, can be trained to withstand any elemental obstacle (minus poison), and can be trained to be as strong as 100 Pikmin to boot! He is a built-in, mandatory handicap to the entire game’s mechanic.

There are other things to critique and there are lots of things to admire, but this review is already long enough, and it’s really not that important. Overall, I would say Pikmin 4 is a good game in the sense that it does what it set out to do, and also seems to have fixed certain aspects that made the game more playable for a wider ranged audience, which I can’t have any serious vendetta against. It’s no longer the game series that I originally fell in love with, but that doesn’t mean I’m upset at people who could never get into the old games and find joy in Pikmin 4, in fact, I feel the exact opposite. I’m very happy to see so many people so passionate and happy about it in a way I felt about the original game, and ultimately, that’s what is most important to me.

P.S. If I was Olimar, I would just kill Louie at this point.

This is the most worthless game Nintendo's ever put out. Straight up unacceptable. There's 3 map layers. Sky, surface, and the depths. Surface is ripped straight from BotW. What was once a land painstakingly crafted from the ground up to be inherently wondrous to explore...Is reduced to mindlessly checking off a barrage of F tier copy paste content. There's borderline NOTHING new or surprising to find. And you get NOTHING for wasting a hundred hours engaging with it. The caves and wells add nothing to the game. This was such a cool opportunity for them to really FILL the map. Expand towns, introduce new ones, flesh out the enemy variety, and fill the world with music. An exciting "rebuilt Hyrule" approach that links the old Zelda style with the new in a very natural way. I genuinely don't think that's a lot to ask of this series. But - they did nothing. Heck with the removal of a strong enemy concept like the guardians, and the artificially tripled size of the world, I'd argue enemy variety has been made worse.

The sky and depths fare even worse. The tutorial island is the only large sky island. The rest are tiny and filled to the brim with copy pasted content. The depths themselves are the biggest waste of time in the industry. You can get more engaging gameplay and sense of wonder out of heckin' Cookie Clicker than the depths. What you initially assume will be a dangerous, scary place with a lot to discover...Pretty much IMMEDIATELY reveals itself to be so devoid of meaningful content or even hazards, that you're not missing any information by leaving it pitch black. The classic Poes are reduced to mindless collectibles scattered across the floor. Woulda been sick to hunt down a variety of ghosts, like a fully realized version of hunting the 10 poes in Hyrule Field in OOT. But alas, you're merely fighting 99% enemies from BotW, or getting rewards that are merely costume pieces from BotW's DLC or Amiibos.

Dungeons have never been less interesting. They in no way resemble the classics and are just less creative divine beasts. Goodbye giant walking animal mechs you have some control of, hello random tiny floating island in the sky. Story sucks too. Cop out ending ruining the one and only cool moment. Rest is slow, meandering, and repetitive with dreadful writing. Ganondorf is wasted. No attempt was even feigned to tie this game into the series overall lore let alone timeline. Frustratingly the response to this issue is often "they never cared" which I disagree with strongly. This game's story is so lazy we have to rely on what is made up on the spot in interviews to even connect it to BotW properly and even then there's inconsistencies at every turn. The fuse gimmick adds very little to the overall experience. Not super useful or gracefully implemented. I can't pretend to care about how technically impressive it might be, it doesn't do combat, ui, puzzles, or traversal any favors. Genuinely just a sloppy, unfocused, actively lame version of Banjo Nuts and Bolts. There's even more shrines in this than botw, with a higher percentage of horrible filler or boring non-puzzles for good measure. Being either insultingly slow, redundant tutorials for basic mechanics, functional tutorials for car parts, or a bad reward for poking around the sky islands or sidequests for a few minutes.
I have no doubt in my mind if the Zelda team was forced to make a brand new game from the ground up in under 2 years with no delays, they could have put out something more deserving of the Zelda name. But alas, another series falls to the irresistible temptation to make objectively bad content and spend 6+ years spreading it as thin as possible. The kind of design that's just allowed to happen these days is upsetting. Imagine telling someone in the year 2000 that in 20 years they'll release a Zelda game where you do the same exact low effort mission over 88 times in a row and that it's one of the only new things they added - and while they were at it 85% of the enemy types have been removed.

P.S. Trying out making shorter versions of my obscenely long reviews. This is still getting rather long, but compared to my original review... 4 paragraphs vs 18's a pretty good TL;DR. I just like to really explain myself when having unpopular opinions. Prolly gonna make a List of all the reviews I do this with. Follow for the eventual TL;DR of my TL;DR. Also the more I dig into this game the more upset I get and I just wanna keep babbling about it.