Tons of positive reviews for Tears of the Kingdom have come out, favorably comparing it to BotW. But, I haven't seen much said on improving over BotW, other than 'it has more stuff'.

I know the simple solution is 'just pirate it and try it out', which, yeah, I might do eventually when I have time, but I've emulated enough to know that it's not always super easy to get everything working right.

Regardless, I felt that BotW was too big and aimless, with an open world that felt empty. The people that like BotW seem to 'make their own fun', and use physics to solve open ended problems. Which, sounds fun, but my fun was kinda killed by the feeling that nothing had a point. I just felt like most of the 'rewards' were just weapons that would break (which, I don't even mind weapon durability, but it did make weapons as a reward suck), or collectables that had minimal impact on the game. Only a few set pieces did much for me, and they were very few and far between. Overall, played about a dozen hours, then went and killed Ganon, to little fanfare.

And, if Tears of the Kingdom is strictly BotW 2, I'd rather not 'waste' another 12 hours. But, I've heard some people say they added dungeons, and more direction to the game. Any opinions from you all?

  • macabrett
    ·
    1 year ago

    I'm gonna do the :reddit-logo: thing and say "I loved BoTW, but" yeah if you didn't like BotW, you're not gonna like this. I don't agree with any of your complaints, but I'm not here to convince you of anything.

    • Eris235 [undecided]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I'm not really trying to be 'fair' to the game, but rather explain what didn't work for me. I can see the positives to the game, and I get why it would be appealing, so I'm not here to call it 'objectively bad'. And, I'm glad for people that do like it. But, very little worked for me in the game.

      I did like the combat, and the one set-piece that worked for me was the lighting dragon bit in the rainy lands. But, the 'glue' of the open world to 'play around in' just bored me to death, and the few moments I liked were pretty sparse. And while the combat is fun, it wasn't something I wanted to do over and over again for hours.

      • macabrett
        ·
        1 year ago

        I'm not far enough in to super judge it, but yeah I just don't think you'll be into TotK. It's definitely a game built for people who love BotW. Different strokes for different folks and all that. BotW and TotK just make me feel a childlike wonder that I haven't really felt since I was gaming in the 90s, so I'm not really speaking objectively on it either. But I do enjoy it! I'm sorry you didn't have a great time with BotW, I hope you have fun with some of the other games coming out this year at least.

        • Eris235 [undecided]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          Lol, I'm sure I will. Mostly, I made this post as a kind of "Please talk me off the hype train, I got on it last time and was burned".

          Probably the only AAA game I've liked so far this year is Returnal, but I've been enjoying a lot of indie stuff, which is where I've drifted lately anyway.

          • macabrett
            ·
            1 year ago

            Hell yeah. Any standout indies you've played this year?

            I checked out Ghost Song and had a hell of a time. Nothing incredible about it, but it's a fun metroidvania with style.

            • Eris235 [undecided]
              hexagon
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Ghost Song

              Hadn't heard anything about this game, but that looks cool, I'll add it to my list!

              Revita's by far my biggest game, hours wise, this year. Been loving Barotrauma with friends. Against the Storm is great to do a run here and there, even after unlocking everything. And La-Mulana is still one of my favorite games of all time, been playing randomizer runs for it a bit (but oof is it a hard randomizer to learn!)