Our Thoughts on Zelda TOTK, One Year Later...

The problem with TOTK is we’ve already played it. It gets boring in 10 hours, because past that you’ve already done everything. Except this time, there’s more of it to do. Now, those “things to do” are absolutely top notch things, but too much of a good thing… yeah. Sad. But true.

I adore the game, its a technical marvel and I have played well over 100 hours but my one issue is the depths, I didnt like a thing about them they were irritating and seemed pointless to me, I wish they invested all that time into sky islands imagine an almost equal map in the sky instead

I got burnout with the game when upgrading every armor piece requires you to go and kill a bunch of random enemies in the hope they drop what you need. It wasn't even a challenge, just tedious. I had done all of the shrines, side quests and main story bits. The only thing I felt like I had to do was finding every Addison. The game should really put down a marker when you find him. Otherwise you have to go online, find a map, and then double-check every single spot he could be which is also super tedious.

Now do one for Pikmin 4, the true MVP of last year

Just starting this video, but I don't even care that Tears is similar to BOTW and misses that initial "wow" factor... I just wished the combat wasn't so horrible yet again and traversal on the ground wasn't so slow. Also, above everything, there just aren't enough interesting things to experience or rewards to get from exploration. You go into a cave and you'll be met with monster materials lol.

I played BotW for WiiU.
I LOATHED the music in this game and it sucks that you can't just turn the music off (at least on the WiiU Edition).
Other than that, I was a bit frustrated with the disposable weapons. It seemed so redundant.
I look back and think it's a pretty good game, but I just can't put it up there with Morrowind, Skyrim, the Horizons, etc.
I'd give it about a 7/10 or a 7.5 I suppose. Perfect boss fight at the end though. Epic stuff.

It's only been a YEAR!!!???
Good grief! That was hell of LONG YEAR!

I just started a new game of TOTK yesterday and stayed up till midnight.

I really don't know why they treated BotW like an afterthought throughout the story as if catering to players who never played it. I'm yet to find anyone who went straight into TotK without having played BotW first.

I fell off botw so hard and didn't bother completing it. The shrines were terrible and just wasn't all that fun. Totk was the complete opposite. Loved it, the powers were much better and the game was a lot more fun.

BOTW is a sensational game and made me fall in love with the series and seemed impossible that it could be outdone, but Nintendo completely proved us wrong. I’ve never experienced such an awe inspiring and sensational game, truly the best game experience of any with its fabulous, story, ending and exploration. It is the closest that we’ll get to a perfect game

Tears of the kingdom was significantly better than breath of the wild. Any point of view to the contrary is simply from nostalgia.

Best game of this decade

I loved the changes introduced in TotK. I felt a stronger emotional connection to the destruction in BotW, but both are completely brilliant. I have seen suggested changes that I agree would have led to an even better TotK, but I love what we got.

I still play it! I’m over 200 hours and still couldn’t finish it! Was playing it last night. I just roam around in the open world, take one or two fights with the monsters, enjoy the sunset and fall asleep. The best open world I’ve ever experienced hands down!

Totk was waaaay more puzzle oriented. Even combat was a puzzle. That made a lot of people go ....eh I'll play something else. Botw had much fewer road block puzzles. I don't think totk would of been super popular even if botw didn't exist

Some of these complaints are so bad.

Felix's problem was that he had just played through BOTW right before TOTK. Additionally, playing TOTK excessively for his job contributed to his burnout.

BotW had 6 years of sales, totk has had a year and is already 3/4 sales of what BotW did, Id say thats a success nonetheless

I just finished it yesterday, having started on launch day. I accumulated the first quarter of my 200 hours of playtime in the first week. Since then, it’s been hard to find enough free time to play larger sections in one sitting. It was a long journey, and it feels like launch was just yesterday, yet also ages ago. Now, I live in a post-TotK world and have to decide what's next. I think the main reason why totk videos didn't get so much attention after launch was that everyone was afraid of spoilers. I personally stopped watching totk vid because I experienced spoilers quite often. Because totk is such a huge game

Looks the same asBOTW, been there done that... need something new, so did not play it

i liked the game. overall it was alot better to me than botw. except for 100% finishing it, you had to collect even more koroks,
which i didnt do and you had a ton of materials and money to upgrade all amor.
i am missing the koroks and all quest but i have done everything else. (i didnt go out of my way to search for sidequests but did all i could find) i have over 150 hours in the game.

I wish it had a difficult mode like in botw

There is sooo much missed opportunities to make this game soar past botw. In the end the endless grinding was a chore and proved pointless because of again the missed opportunities. Im referring to armor upgrading, battery gathering, etc

A big regret was how they made every npc in the world have no idea who you are. Go and meet someone you spent hours helping and they treat you like a stranger. If they had the contstuct guards with higher levels in the depths thta wouldve helped making exploration more fun

Enjoyed my first playthrough of TOTK a lot, but whenever I think about replaying it, I start dreading the prospect of slogging through the long linear/railroaded sections of the game, and ultimately give up on starting a new save file. I feel like BOTW gave you a lot more freedom all throughout the game, which makes it easier to replay for me (I still replay that game from time to time). If only there were some perfect hybrid of both games: the variety and involvement of TOTK with the freedom and immersion of BOTW.

ToTK suffers from 3 crippling issues for me:

- Horrendous UI, particularly when it comes to fuse things to your arrows. Whoever came up with that system needs to look in the mirror 😂
- A story where you’re not only passenger, you’re on the roof of the train and it’s raining. There is so much interesting lore, cool characters and an entire setting that you as the player never get to interact with. It’s the classic too much telling, not enough showing 😴
- Once you reach a certain point, nothing in the world feels dangerous. While many will argue that this sense of strength of fun, for me, I still want some sort of challenge in the world that can kill me outside of the bosses. Even then, the bosses are not challenging (nor have they ever been tbh) 😢

The ending of Breath of the Wild, should’ve been the beginning cutscene of TOTK. Imagine you finish BoTW and you go underground to find ganondorfs body. And Zelda falls in the dark hole ( I don’t remember the beginning exactly but) and it says to be continued…. That would’ve been so epic

Totk > Botw

Gameplay was good and world building was good especially liked the Rito being covered in a bizzard and the Gerudo sand storm and all the missions related to those main quests.

Story could have been better using the same cutscene over and over again for each region was a big disappointment. Ganondorf not being related to previous versions from Ocarina or Twilight was a huge disappointment. Depths was cool at first then you discover quickly how disappointing it actually is. Just a huge open space full of nothing with a few Yiga quests and treasure chests scattered here and there.

They should have made the depths smaller and worked more on the sky islands to make them interesting or make more side quests for characters that do absolutely nothing in the game. Purah literally stands in the same exact place through the whole game and doesnt move. The same with Paya. Why not give them some side quests so you can actually interact with them.

Game was a 8/10 for sure but too many things they just borrowed from the tired and over done Ubishit formula.... Sorry meant Ubisoft.

They should have took a page out of Elden Ring if they wanted to make a interesting world.

I got 100% completion...I was recovering from an injury, and this was the perfect game at the time. You can feel peace while exploring alone in this game.

It’s my favorite! I’m a 31 year old married woman who has never played video games until BOTW came out and now this.

The only reason people like BotW is it completely demolished Skyward Sword and in part TotK seems less impressive because it wasn’t a dramatic leap from BotW.

Just boss fights alone TotK is the better game, ntm Dungeons and overall story.

I have done all of the things except for collect all the Korok seeds, which I have no intention of doing. Loved the game. But disappointments include a lack of things happening in the depths. There were great surprises there but spread too thin.

I was unaware of Zions music. Where can I find it I would love to support?

I can’t believe it’s been a year already.

I really appreciated the quality of life improvements in TOTK, the improvement in combat, the boss fights, and the story. I did everything I could before finishing up the fight.

But I played through BOTW four times. Twice on normal and twice on Master mode. I haven’t been back to TOTK. I liked it, but in a lot of ways it’s just too big. It takes too much time. I don’t want to go back and sink that much time into it again.

I think some of it has to do with farming dragon parts. Some of it has to do with how big and empty underground is. And this might sound crazy, but I wish there were more enemy types.

Looking forward to see what they do with the next Zelda, though.

Someone else who think the controls of TOTK sucks? Clunky and frustrating

Great video! I would agree that BoTW is my favorite of the two. I say that and believe that ToTK is probably the best game.
The greater simplicity of BoTW allows for more replay value for me. I have beaten it a dozen times and every time I play I find new things and it feels like a totally different experience.
ToTK is a game that is full to the brim. I have logged so much time into my first play through and barely scratched the surface of it. I did feel like I had lost the will to keep going in it and that led me to go and beat the main quest. But it’s a phenomenal game and I would hate to punish it for having too many things. I think if I could only have one game the rest of my life I would pick one of these two games.
They give you amazing worlds to explore and I haven’t had any experience like it

Why is the wolf link companion not in this game😢😢😢

I’m doing an A B test, just finished trial of the sword and champions ballad in master mode, just need 12 more shrines to have them all then I face Ganon and go straight into totk like it’s one game

I preferred BoTW due to being the first experience but also, while ToTK has some decent ideas, I found it clunky (building wonky vehicles) and both the sky and underground areas weren’t really additive.

If this series is to be remade one day, and at that time, these two works are combined into one huge work that focuses on botw in the first half and totk in the second half, it will probably become an immortal game in the history of games. (Already in that position, but if they do that, zelda will go to an area that no game company dares to challenge.)

I went from playing Tears of the Kingdom 170 hours to my first play through of Persona 5 Royal. Big mistake

I tried it, but it's not for me. I don't enjoy spending hours playing just to realize I went in a wrong direction or even better not knowing what to do next. Sold the game

I still haven’t beat it 😭

I’m still on the Sky Island!!

It's good and enjoyable until you start farming for zonite

I have I think around 180-200 hours and never killed a Gleeok 🤣😅🫢