Game Debate #222: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

[Reed Rothchild | 9,915]

[TDIRunner | 2,883]

10.  I enjoyed it more than BOTW, and I still consider BOTW to be a 10.  

[Pojosama | 2]

Haven't played it yet. More poor backlog is stacked.

[Tanooki | 5,111]

I played it for awhile then put it down.  It takes the many of the good parts of BotW, but sadly not most of them, and that's a good thing.  The problem is simple - bloat.  There's too much to do, the game moves along at a glacial pace to where you can go about with towers and dungeons, and getting this or that little thing and 3 hours will go by and the game progression clock moves all of one tenth of one percent.  At that rate you then get to where you learn it's not just the ground, but underground and more, and they're not small by any means.  It sucks the life out of you, your cares, when you realize with a normal life only X hours can go into a game a day or week, and it would take maybe 6-12months or more to finish if you dedicated to it.  My power went out for a good week the July after it arrived, I never went back because of how it ticked along.  Second to that, I preferred the abilities you got in BotW over those in the sequel, just a bit too much crafting and odd stuff required, everything just was ratched up a lot, too much.  So to me, it's meh, and I'd rather play something else like it, including its prequel again.  It's good, but I won't come back around to it because of how it was downgraded by design into a supremely painfully slow slog.

[Sumez | 3,153]

 

[OptOut | 8,990]

The kids have played it, they seem to like it, although my youngest says he prefers BOTW. I played it for about 20 mins and got bored, so maybe I'll try it out again in a few years.

[NostalgicMachine | 325]

I still haven't played this one yet, but definitely want to.

[RH | 5,202]

7 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I played it for awhile then put it down.  It takes the many of the good parts of BotW, but sadly not most of them, and that's a good thing.  The problem is simple - bloat.  There's too much to do, the game moves along at a glacial pace to where you can go about with towers and dungeons, and getting this or that little thing and 3 hours will go by and the game progression clock moves all of one tenth of one percent.  At that rate you then get to where you learn it's not just the ground, but underground and more, and they're not small by any means.  It sucks the life out of you, your cares, when you realize with a normal life only X hours can go into a game a day or week, and it would take maybe 6-12months or more to finish if you dedicated to it.  My power went out for a good week the July after it arrived, I never went back because of how it ticked along.  Second to that, I preferred the abilities you got in BotW over those in the sequel, just a bit too much crafting and odd stuff required, everything just was ratched up a lot, too much.  So to me, it's meh, and I'd rather play something else like it, including its prequel again.  It's good, but I won't come back around to it because of how it was downgraded by design into a supremely painfully slow slog.

This sums up my experience perfectly. It's simply an odd game where it's too much like the original game, even in it's "good" ways, that it kind of undercut itself.

There are some games that are so good, you really, really want the next iteration of the same experience. Immediately GoldenEye to Perfect Dark comes to mind. PD wasn't the better game but man was it fun to have the upgrades, changes and tweaks while getting more of the "same". It was an upgrade that was done right.

But this... it just feels like it's more of the same, with some new (admittedly cool) features and just a much bigger world. The more I think about it, I think what I want from "upgrades" is nice QOA tweaks, but not necessarily BIGGER experiences. I think TOTK would have been better as a DLC. I never bought the BOTW DLC, but TOTK could have been a really long side quest, sure, they could have created 30-40 cave entrances and built and entire new dungeon across the whole map, but a whole, massive game doing more-or-less the same as BOTW? Nah, it was fun the first time but I don't want to do the whole thing over again. It was a one and done experience.

[a3quit4s | 4,338]

It is ok to not like a game!

[Webhead123 | 739]

Still haven't played it yet although as much as I loved BotW, I can't imagine not enjoying this one.

[Link | 2,878]

I haven't yet gotten around to having time to dedicate to it. 

I didn't buy it right away because I was hoping for an explorer's guide or some book to match the BotW guide. When that didn't happen, I put it on my Christmas list, so my brother bought me Link's Awakening. 

I bought it myself later and I just noticed yesterday I seem to have done so twice. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,915]

10/10

I'm only 10 hours in but I'm calling my shot.  No need to overthink things.

I get people calling out bloat.  Bloat can be a very real and detrimental thing.  Look at some of the Assassins Creed games for a perfect example of that.  Or even games like Crash Bandicoot 4.  Adding things for the sake of having things is not usually a wise design choice.

But I never get that feeling with BotW or TotK

Huge =/= bloat

I love getting lost in this world, and always finding some new things that explore.  And I don't worry about how long it's taking or about seeing some progress indicator increment.  Most people don't complete most of their games anyway.  Hell, I took 4 years to complete BotW because I wanted to give the experience as much room as possible.  I may very well do that with TotK.  You just enjoy the ride.

This is also a great game to play with your kids.  They're constantly excited to tell me about the places I can go and the treasures I can find.  Probably the most engaging single player game for us to experience as a group. 

[RH | 5,202]

4 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

It is ok to not like a game!

 

2 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

10/10

I'm only 10 hours in but I'm calling my shot.  No need to overthink things.

I get people calling out bloat.  Bloat can be a very real and detrimental thing.  Look at some of the Assassins Creed games for a perfect example of that.  Or even games like Crash Bandicoot 4.  Adding things for the sake of having things is not usually a wise design choice.

But I never get that feeling with BotW or TotK

Huge =/= bloat

I love getting lost in this world, and always finding some new things that explore.  And I don't worry about how long it's taking or about seeing some progress indicator increment.  Most people don't complete most of their games anyway.  Hell, I took 4 years to complete BotW because I wanted to give the experience as much room as possible.  I may very well do that with TotK.  You just enjoy the ride.

This is also a great game to play with your kids.  They're constantly excited to tell me about the places I can go and the treasures I can find.  Probably the most engaging single player game for us to experience as a group. 

My kids started playing this game and, interesting enough, my son (who's 11) has stuck with it but my daughter popped in BotW and wanted that one instead.  They both tried these games for the first time earlier this year. I think my son likes building things (though I did have to get him off of the floating island so he could start exploring the main world.)

I don't want to say I don't like this game. I bought it very soon after launch because in the past 2 decades, I put more hours into BotW than any other game I've played.  However, there was just something about the experience. I got off of Tutorial Island and then played for about 4-5 hours and I felt like I hadn't done anything meaningful yet and it just started feeling like work.

But, with that said, if I managed to play this game before I started playing BotW, this would probably be a 10 of 10 and a personal favorite. I just think this type of game has to be something that offers something quite different than past experiences if it's going to really maintain my interest. 

Edited 18 hours ago by RH

[a3quit4s | 4,338]

14 minutes ago, RH said:

 

My kids started playing this game and, interesting enough, my son (who's 11) has stuck with it but my daughter popped in BotW and wanted that one instead.  They both tried these games for the first time earlier this year. I think my son likes building things (though I did have to get him off of the floating island so he could start exploring the main world.)

I don't want to say I don't like this game. I bought very soon after launch because in the past 2 decades, I put more hours into BotW than any other game I've played.  However, there was just something about the experience. I got off of Tutorial Island and then played for about 4-5 hours and I felt like I hadn't done anything meaningful yet and it just started feeling like work.

But, with that said, if I managed to play this game before I started playing BotW, this would probably be a 10 of 10 and a personal favorite. I just think this type of game has to be something that offers something quite different than past experiences if it's going to really maintain my interest. 

I love them both but BotW is the better game; yes TotK has more to it but most of its mechanics, map, inventory, etc come from BotW. More was added in TotK but I don’t feel anything that existed before was improved because BotW was perfect lol

I guess another way to put it is BotW was 100% a new experience while maybe 25-50% was a new experience on TotK

Edited 19 hours ago by a3quit4s

[CMR | 538]

9/10 just because I thought BOTW was the better experience overall.  (BOTW is a 10)

Edited 11 hours ago by CMR

[twiztor | 918]

loved BOTW. hoping to get to this one in 2025.