I Still Prefer Zelda: Breath of the Wild Over Tears of the Kingdom

[@Curtis3604]

The sense of awe and wonder i had exploring the BOTW map for the first time was my favorite feeling I've ever had from a game

[@yumeironeko]

Same. ☺ It was magic I don't think I'll ever quite recapture.

[@everygamersdream72]

Yup, outstanding.

[@ericwindsor339]

Yeah that's facts. Truly felt magical and like you were exploring some hidden world

[@finnmarr-heenan2397]

Too bad nearly every other element was lacking , especially for a Zelda game. Weak combat, weak lore, ambient music ,awful dungeon and shrine design, lack of enemy types .pretty mid nostalgia bait if u ask me .

[@Curtis3604]

@@finnmarr-heenan2397 nobody cares what you think

[@mhbackman]

The melancholy, isolation, solitude and sense of space was magical in BoTW. Playing it remains one of my most treasured memories in modern gaming.

[@jkang203]

I first played botw it when I was 11, the nostalgia and everything you said was just so magical. The best memory I have in gaming to this day

[@christianjohnhill]

I know Zelda had to evolve but I miss the dungeons. BOTW was an empty experience for me.

[@thephantomjedi3729]

The reasons I agree with you that were not really mentioned. 1. BOTW characters were more enjoyable and compelling, especially with the Champions Ballad DLC. I miss the champions. 2. Kass and his little shrine quests were sorely missed. 3. Less is more. The map was so big, but there wasn’t much reason to travel to the depths or sky. Worse, the map is so big between the 3 tiers, it’s even easier to miss things. Example, I never naturally came across the Yiga quest. I had to look it up. 4. The new gameplay is really cool, but some things were made to be more frustrating. Not gonna lie, I deeply missed elemental arrows rather than constantly fusing. That was annoying. The champion powers were also far better than the sages. Finally, why did you take my bombs! 5. Not as playable for casuals. In BOTW, the differentiation of gameplay made the game doable for everyone. Can’t beat a lynel, use an ancient arrow. Guardians had a cool parry or combat option. I found myself skipping gleeocks because they took too much to beat. It was frustrating, and I would have appreciated a cheat. :) i work a lot. I don’t have time to be a pro player, and BOTW was perfect gameplay for a guy like me. I was not shocked there was no DLC for this. It was already challenging enough. If the series wants to become more difficult that is fine, but they need a difficulty mode. 6. Minus the new game play elements…. The story itself could have been DLC. The sky islands and a few powers could have been added to a paid DLC… even a small part of the depths could have been added. It would have been smaller… but I think that would have led to a stronger game. 7. Non linear story does not work here. The memories needed to play in order, and you should not have been able to collect them until after the big Zelda reveal. Finding certain memories too soon ruined the story twist, and makes the story of the dungeons feel grossly repetitive. Those are my main gripes. I played BOTW after this and enjoyed that replay much more… less is more. It really is.

[@RTU130]

True

[@lucamayhem]

Also you can't crossdress in totk

[@Jdudec367]

1. I don't see how especially with the new champions tbh. 2. Ok true I miss Kass too :( 3. Eh there is, you can find stuff and get stuff in the depths and sky like weaoons and armour and materials and items and spirit orbs etc. 4. OK yeah that can be annoying. Eh were the champion powers better? They were less annoying to use but I dunno about better in terms of actual use. Bombs are still here just not unlimited. 5. Nah it is as playable for casuals tbh. You can still get OP stuff and beat gleeocks but it will take time. I don't think a cheat is really fair like Gleeocks should be challenging. 6. Not really, it's story feels like a sequel really. No that would be way too much of a fundamental change to be paid DLC. Nah what we got is better tbh. 7. Nah it does honestly work here tbh. Eh no piecing it all together like this works too. Not really you wouldn't know the full context of the story after all at that point yet, and no it doesn't make the story of the dungeons feel repetitive at all. Less isn't always more really.

[@greenmenace9666]

I agree with the original post 100%! Just to reiterate why from my opinion: 1 and 2. I believe it was a poor design choice to go away from BoTW when it was set in the same world/timeline. ToTK is a sequel that didn't want to be a sequel. 3 and 6. The world was so big, ToTK had to reuse the same assets--aside from base world, the sky islands were repetitive, and the depths were massive and bland. Not to mention Korok puzzles. It's sheer size is part of the reason for fps drops. There comes a point where game integrity means something: unique environments/experiences for a player to explore reward the player, and I would argue that would be especially true in an open world. If the game wasn't as big, the game can focus more on what's IN the world. Rather than big and long, I want something unique and rewarding. Less is more. 4. What was perhaps the biggest complaint fans had about BoTW? The menu. What did ToTK do? It tripled down on the menu. Just about everything had a setup screen from sages, to fuse, to ultrahand, to weapons breaking. It wasn't hard OR rewarding in any way, shape, or form. It just took forever. I felt the same way about the loss of bombs. At the very least, make Yunobo's power one shot the boulders! 5. The grind in ToTK is *exponentially* longer and oddly formulaic. Link doesn't get rupees as quickly or reliably and everything was more expensive. The difficulty is really hard until you play a bunch and upgrade one set of armor to the top. At that point, combat becomes even easier than BoTW. In ToTK, you have to spend hours doing the same thing to get Link to scale. Grinding to scale wasn't rewarding to me because the opportunity cost kicks in: I start thinking about other things I could have done instead of having my game interrupted with annoying mechanics like the blood moon signaling me to go rare stone talus hunting for forty five minutes every other hour. 7. I think ToTK's story is underrated. I really do because Zelda's story was different and it was interesting. But the reason why ToTK's story is underrated is because it's underdeveloped. The stakes never seemed lower--it felt like everything had already happened and really it was up to Link when he confronted Ganondorf / rescued Zelda. And SO MUCH of ToTK's plot was heavily influenced by SS. It all comes together to feel anticlimactic. Which is why I agree that memories need to be a thing of the past. Why I preferred BoTW: Less is more in my book because in an open world, I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. That grind in ToTK...it wasn't even hard...it was just painful. In BoTW, pretty much everything was optional. You got to do you from the start and that was what made it a special experience. It was different for every person that played it. I got to make choices of what I would rather do instead of what was the most optimal.

[@ihatejellybeans7375]

I beat my first THREE Gleeoks today. 2 King and 1 Fire. I used a TON of eyeballs.

[@adamjonesOther]

Small thing: The guardians disappeared and no one talked about it. Also previous NPCs forgot I existed. Made me feel like Tears was an elseworld story rather than a sequel.

[@jordanwolfson8378]

TOTK really feels like retcon central in so many ways. The Ultrahand and fuse mechanics are cool but I miss having to scour the map for the best weapons/armor for specific encounters and such :(

[@nicoledin7091]

Yeah it felt like a slap in the face

[@ummidk757]

Right? It felt as if they wanted us to play that game first it felt as if it was an alternative time line and the story we experience in botw was irrevalent it’s not a small thing for me it was a huge gripe with the game I have

[@tcg2717]

Threw away such good lore. Champions? Sheikah? Divine Beasts? Guardians? All out the window.

[@dannyzp]

For me, TOTK felt like a grind. It's so big and the 3 levels, one of which you already explored in BOTW, just make it feel like you're rehashing Hyrule. I like creating things, but everything felt like work. You didn't just get strong weapons, you had to build them. You didn't get a magical device/animal to traverse the sky, you had to build up your batteries and your hovercraft. It felt as though there were 3-4 steps you had to take to enjoy the game. Once you did X, Y, and Z, now you can really fly around the sky or get around the depths. Then you throw in how big Hyrule is and 2x it with the depths, at a certain point, I just got over it. There wasn't enough "newness" to keep me excited. I still really enjoyed it, but it definitely did not feel as wire-to-wire magical as BOTW.

[@hanzo90]

What made BotW so special is experiencing one of the greatest games of all time on Nintendo's brand new hybrid console for the first time. Experiencing 2 very special products at the same time was just an incredible moment in gaming that I'll never forget

[@anthonymanuel55000]

I experienced it for the first time on the Wii U

[@sadied0g]

@@anthonymanuel55000LOL

[@anthonymanuel55000]

@@sadied0g just bc there was no switch’s available and I didn’t wanna wait a month to play it

[@trapez77]

It was better as the Wii Us swan song

[@anthonymanuel55000]

@@trapez77 I agree I see Tears Of The Kingdom more as the Switches Zelda

[@bajuiceta8375]

This is how I’ve felt since the game came out! What burnt me out was there was just too much. Too many different collectible currencies and parts to gather, and it honestly just felt like a collectathon/menu simulator at times. I appreciate the simplicity of BotW despite it generally being the “emptier” game. Still looking forward to the future of the franchise.

[@a18yearoldonyoutubeluigi]

Kinda like Spider Man 1 and 2

[@jada8047]

I like exploring but it went overboard

[@loganvest367]

There's no currencies in TOTK, and you have the option not to do side content. Any video game where people cry about doing side content=auto ignore.

[@fishyperil2153]

That's actually my biggest problem with ToTK too tbh .... literally too much stuff to do. The thing is, when content is largely built on a certain formula, such as collecting koroks, clearing shrines, or seeking out lightroots in the depths while scavenging resources, after a while it just becomes boring if no meaningful alterations are made. And sadly ToTK doesn't make enough meaningful alterations to justify its 300 hour run (if you're trying to collect most stuff). I think the game is great and I prefer it to BotW, but I also think it's a very weird case of a game that would actually be better if it was simply shorter.

[@invisibleBDK]

This was me too

[@mitwhitgaming7722]

I fear I have to agree with this.

[@CrowTRobot]

Same. TotK is still very good and the story is excellent but that sense of discovery and wonder that I felt in BotW was missing.

[@number-kg3ul]

I agree

[@loganvest367]

@@CrowTRobot you mean nostalgia bud. Nostalgia doesn't make a game better. TOTK dumpsters BotW in every way

[@TheSpeedfoever]

I disagree

[@atomicsamurai9742]

Im still so excited to play tears, botw was amazing, i just got a bit overwhelmed and. Lack of time now to really enjoy it

[@BingBangPoe]

I think the main gist of it is that Breath of the Wild was all about the innovation of Zelda in an open-world setting, while Tears of the Kingdom was about refining the new formula. I actually ended up dropping Tears of the Kingdom. I got bored. It didn't hook me as much as Breath of the Wild, which I couldn't stop playing. It's a real shame, to be honest. New mechanics aside, Tears of the Kingdom didn't feel fresh to me. And I honestly didn't enjoy the whole building thing.

[@DavidPerez-fi7pj]

I never played botw and just started playing Totk because my brother convinced me. I never saw any trailers or any playthroughs before I started playing so I had no idea what I was getting into and it was so amazing. I feel like I got lucky playing Totk because I got the benefits of both games and it was a really awesome experience.

[@alibabaschultz352]

Botw is a completely different work of art.

[@GooberBoi6000]

​@@alibabaschultz352I didn't play It first, and now I want to play it. But I don't know if I will be bored after I complete it like TOTK😭

[@samf.s.7731]

No. What you got was a mechanics game, and what you missed out on was a once in a generation type of experience. It's a magical one, full of awe and wonder. Something that you've probably experienced as a child but was completely lost to you as an adult.

[@GooberBoi6000]

@@samf.s.7731 TOTK is so fun, but not as good as BOTW

[@davidsun2960]

As soon as I knew TOTK was using the same map as BOTW I didn’t touch the first game again. I knew it would have a negative effect on the sequel if I was too familiar with the open world map before playing.

[@loganvest367]

It was known for years, players should take personal responsibility

[@VashTown]

Didn't affect me at all. I even replayed BotW again right before TotK. The world felt completely different.

[@noodleman4555]

@@loganvest367 Yeah, no. If Jim Bob decided to replay botw before totk that's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with reusing the map, but players by extension are also in their own right to claim the map feels boring for being reused regardless of if they played botw right before. That is their opinion and got every right to stand by it, and there is no "responsibility" to take for simply playing two games of the same continuity back to back. I didn't personally think the map was boring despite playing botw again a month beforehand because there was a lot of fresh new additions to it, but even I recognize claiming players who feel different are somehow at fault is an absolutely brain dead statement. I have plenty of criticism towards the game, but none of them have anything to do with the map design.

[@loganvest367]

@@noodleman4555 no players don't have the right to say unfounded fake stuff that can be disprove.

[@noodleman4555]

@@loganvest367 They literally do. Get over it. Your conclusion completely lacks logical thinking. And there is nothing "unfounded" or "fake" about a personal opinion. You just disagree.

[@jonathanalfano3941]

I prefer BotW for two reasons: 1. It was first and had way more magic in it. 2. The game flows way better. In TotK you have to stop so often to build something, fuse your weapon to something, etc. In BotW, you're usually moving forward way more often.

[@jahnotreal]

Yes exactly! Even the little things like switching arrow types in BotW become tedious in TotK when having to fuse an item from a giant list each time.

[@toonzelda3353]

Oml yesss! Switching up materials for your arrow was very unintuitive. Its so stupid that whenever you want to shoot a fire arrow you cant just shoot a barrage of them at once and need to keep selecting the material. Every time your forced to stop just to think about something. In BOTW everything flows well, you got your exploration but nothing is left you standing around. Your always on the move tryna hunt some deer lol, or progress to a new region quickly. It invented the ideas. TOTK was just an addon to BOTW and hardly a good sequel. Theres even the exact same map but only more empty without the threat of guardians.

[@loganvest367]

Nope, TOTK was better. Fusing is a skill issue, you're not using it right.

[@loganvest367]

@@toonzelda3353 learn new ways of combat then.

[@Keanine]

@@loganvest367 The fusing is better, but the menu is poor. At the very least they needed a favourites system where you could make certain materials show up at the beginning of your list so you don't have to wait for the game to decide that you've used it enough that it will be moved to the front of the list

[@The.natrix]

I was a little disappointed to find that TOTK was more or less an expansion of BOTW, but I ended up thoroughly enjoying the game. However, my experience with BOTW was one unforgettable and I remember becoming so obsessed with the game; it was one of those games that I couldn't stop thinking about and would squeeze in as much time as possible to play it, whereas with TOTK I didn't quite have the same obsession.

[@OBDPVCR]

The secret is/was the BREATH OF THE WILD!! Literally. Definitely recommend turning on "Pro" HUD mode. Helps make the TOTK exploration feel a bit more Zen like BOTW

[@user-InspireEllen]

@@OBDPVCR what is pro hud mode please?

[@OBDPVCR]

@@user-InspireEllen Open the game menu by pressing the plus (+) button. Then navigate to the System page (with the gear symbol) and select Options. Next, scroll down to "HUD mode" and toggle it from Normal to Pro. Gamechanger.

[@brichan1851]

I think many, like yourself, think back more fondly on BotW over TotK because they played it first. There was that sense of awe in exploring this Hyrule, and when Tears came out, it was largely the same. The quality is there, but the wonder is diminished because we have seen much of it before. It’s really a difference between “revolutionary” and “evolutionary.” I love both games for different reasons. Breath is simply classic and cannot be equaled or topped. Tears is the next step and continues the story. Tears is more exciting in its action, while Breath is more exciting in its adventure. This is a coin and we are viewing both sides of it.

[@servantbyday]

Excellently explained.

[@AdventuresAwait123]

Excellent. I agree.

[@erenyeeagah204]

the real issue with totk is that they did not properly expand on what was already there, nor did they adress the main complaints. we wanted traditional dungeons, we didnt get them. we wanted a deeper more engaging story we didnt get that either. whats left is the same game with the same world but better gameplay, some new enemies and new divine beasts. traditianal dungeons wouldve added a lot to how people wouldve experienced the game. you can tell by how many people found the path to the dungeons to be the most exciting part of the game. if the temples themselves were huge traditional dungeons it wouldve added so much to the experience and more playtime. same thing with the story. one complaint was that while the story was touching, all the cool stuff took place in the past. it was cool for botw, but for totk it wouldve been nice to have a story that takes place in the present with flashbacks that were shown in a chronological order unlike trhe memories we got. again. whats more, the skyisland which were a huge fokus were also a let down. apparently there were gonna be more but the devs were told to remove several skyislands becasue "the sky looked too cluttered". many agree that the tutorial skyisland was the best island and probably one of the best parts of the game and it wouldve been nice if there woudlve been more of them. the depths which are basically a hardmode also left a lot to be desired. it was cool at first but got old quick due to lack of variety. the game is still amazing tho and i definetly enjoy it more than botw overall.

[@brichan1851]

@@erenyeeagah204 really?! No offense, but it sounds like you were very disappointed in TotK. Just by going off what you said.

[@rayofsunshan]

I agree.

[@Matthew-FG6]

Totk wasn't botw2. It was botw redux, which is even worse. Having to reopen the entire map again and finding koroks again and doing shrines again made the game feel "I've already done this. Why am i doing it again? I want something new". Then you get the new stuff and it's a few sky islands and a very under-used depths. The game should have been played in the past. That would have been epic. Trying to get back home while trying to figure out how to defeat Ganandorf when you get there. That's the game we needed.

[@ericwindsor339]

Exactly. The same map, with the same koroks, with the same armour pieces, with the same hearts and stamina upgrades we all ALREADY DID in the previous game. 100% felt like a remake and not a sequel

[@loganvest367]

Absurd. The depths and sky are both home too 2 temples each, they aren't under used. You are asking for a game which is incredibly beyond anything currently released. Even TOTK is FAR more advanced than other games. Players are just ridiculous with their expectations sometimes

[@jada8047]

​@ericwindsor339 What they should have done was make the underground the only part of the map instead of underground regular world an sky... In underground put koko seeds in their. The regular same world was a re run.

[@girahimar2122]

@@loganvest367 home to 2 bad temples each, they're totally underused since there is NOTHING in the depths and the sky islands are copy pasted, he's not asking for something incredible, he's asking for something acceptable for 6 years of waiting, player arent ridiculous with their expectations, players had rational expectations and they were met with the most empty game of the decade, ant totk is not advanced compared to other games, it's content is backward

[@brettpardue8786]

​@girahimar2122 what are you talking about there is nothing in the depths??? Lmao. That was my first impression after like 20 hours in the game and I only found a couple armor pieces down there but then I actually started exploring more and there temples, alternate versions of bosses, some new enemies and coliseums that I have found so far. I think it has just the right amount of stuff to do down there because you don't want a cavern to be too stuffed with s*** that doesn't make sense. That's what makes the depths cool is because they're dark open caverns and you don't know when you're going to find something or what you're going to run into.

[@stephenveerasammy3074]

When I found out I had my previous horses. I'm not attached to my horse 'Hyundai' at all, but it was kind of nice

[@atomicsamurai9742]

Cool name, mines was roach

[@Crazy_Gamer_OG]

you never need horses in TotK anyways

[@Leftiescrewdriver30]

Named mine Bluelatte mocha

[@atomicsamurai9742]

@@Crazy_Gamer_OG I definitely did lol, stamina is garbage at the beginning, was glad to see roach to be honest

[@giygas9305]

Oh yeah I never played Tears of the Kingdom but my little brother told me about this. Nice touch

[@eeveekyu4446]

one thing that majorly bothered me in TOTK that sounds like a nitpick is how much cleaner the weapons are in BOTW, you had your weapons and your elemental arrows, they were cool and yeah the weapon breaking honestly never bothered me. In TOTK weapons are all rusted since your supposed to fuse them to monster horns to add durability and damage, but they look so ugly and fusing is so finicky. having to mine huge rocks in caves also makes you shread through your weapon collection making exploration even more tedious. the only way to get non rusted weapons in TOTK is through the depths, but this in turn makes those weapons from BOTW way more valluable and makes them breaking way more of an issue then in the original

[@loganvest367]

This made the game better, not worse. Use yunobo to mine noob...

[@minecrafter3448]

That’s beyond even a nitpick, that’s actively a positive thing that it can so effectively convey that it’s a weaker weapon, and make pristine weapons seem like treasures despite us already having access to them in botw

[@loganvest367]

@@minecrafter3448 not only that. it made fusing more necessary. it was good design.

[@minecrafter3448]

@@loganvest367 I think they’re talking about the visual design and not how it affects gameplay

[@nathonso_edits]

Yeah that was pretty annoying, I had to resort to using glitches to get a ton of bombs cause I was annoyed at using all my weapons to mine for stuff or break boulders away

[@DrSussPlays]

I can’t ignore the mustache. I haven’t been able to process any word said while showing Felix.

[@starshapedpeaches]

He’s also casually super jacked underneath that hoodie too, he’s teasing us

[@minifluff201]

One thing that really got me was that the old clothing being the rewards for most of the puzzles and only new stuff being in the sky. So it didn't feel as rewarding when I found them and it didn't help that I already had all the amiibo stuff so finding them in the depts was pointless.

[@Gattsu_the_struggler]

The ability to traverse the map so much easier in totk (be it with ultra hand, the sky view towers and rocket gliding) ironically made the game less enjoyable. I could rarely ever get anything done in botw without being sidetracked several times whereas in totk everything felt so easy to check mark

[@caseyimiller]

I think this is my main problem with TotK. The streamlined movement makes everything faster paced especially with multiple QoL improvements like full storage swapping

[@Naniganz]

100% agreed! I can't bring myself to touch TotK after beating it, but I'm on fourth playthrough of BotW.

[@loganvest367]

You hear this from every series. You just have nostalgia bud, breath of the wild is nothing compared to TOTK. There's still ppl claiming 2d Zeldas are the best.. no, lol. Nostalgia=nostalgia.

[@toonzelda3353]

​@@loganvest367TOTK is trash. Bring back guardians and add actual villages in the sky instead of Zonai construct crap. Lol.

[@toonzelda3353]

​​@@loganvest367Take a look at Majoras Mask and you have a much better sequel. Whole new map, mask system, time system and different focus around the NPCs rather then on Link's storyline. TOTK is just a glorified DLC and nothing in any way makes it better. Reuses same map, gets repetitive and boring, the arrow system is garbage having you stop just to switch out elemental type materials for your bow etc. The list goes on. Guardians missing and the overall challenge is what I missed which BOTW had. This game felt way too easy at times lol.

[@RaK0]

​@@loganvest367so, every taste that isn't like yours is nostalgia? Sure thing, bud. Don't expect people to discuss with you about anything with this mindset you have there.

[@TheWonderful-101]

@@toonzelda3353It's so funny seeing Zelda fans argue against BoTW with reductive reasoning then do the same for ToTK, aggrandising BoTW. See you in 6 years when the next Zelda is suddenly trash relative to ToTK lol

[@PencilCase6B]

I felt the same about the game. Not changing the map was Nintendo's biggest mistake (and they could, as the upheaval was a great excuse to shift the land in places due to the chasms opening up and the islands falling from the sky). It just didn't matter how many new features were added, the magic of exploration wasn't there, so the game lost its best feature.

[@undergroundhiphopfan6335]

But they did. I mean, everything in it was recontextualised. Sure it's the same locations, but the gameplay isn't the same. I felt TOTK had better exploration as the rewards were better.

[@loganvest367]

@@undergroundhiphopfan6335 yep, and ppl drastically understate the sky Islands. I think some ppl need to go replay the game and remember whats in it instead of calling everything empty

[@girahimar2122]

@@undergroundhiphopfan6335 totk's world is disorganised unlike botw and the rewards are still basically nothing

[@girahimar2122]

@@loganvest367 but it is in fact empty, the sky islands are one of the most pointless thing i ever saw in a game

[@johnwarosa2905]

​@@girahimar2122you get shrines, koroks, outfits, maps, sages wills and two temples in the sky

[@kotake13]

Am i the only weirdo who likes them both equally for completely different reasons? TOTK abilities are just so cool and make the puzzles so interesting. Also, I love how there's more to collect and make. In both games I enjoyed exploring and looking for new things/meeting different characters. I think BOTW felt more free exploration wise..I really could pick up either game in any moment and enjoy some downtime. Both games came to me in different moments in my life that made them uniquely special.

[@anthonymanuel55000]

Yea that’s kinda how I feel too

[@820krx7]

Yeah, BotW plays/feels like Morrowind, TotK plays like an open world Portal 2 insofar as Botw asks that you let yourself be lost in its world, and Tears asks to be solved.

[@BubblesChika]

No need to be so narcissistic. If you liked both games equally, that's fine, but a lot of people didn't . That's why it's been criticised so much

[@Ramiel1point0]

​@@BubblesChika Explain how the above comment is narcissistic. Not a joke. Please explain.

[@Ramiel1point0]

To the OP, no, you are not alone. I feel the same way.

[@JohnvanCapel]

For me, the main reason I didn't enjoy Tears as much was because... Honestly, it just feels way less coherent, and it feels like it's trying to overshadow the first game with its own stuff rather than build upon what was already there, which ultimately worked to the detriment of both the token pre-existing presence and the new stuff. The story doesn't seem to know whether it's trying to be Breath of the Wild's non-linear memory-driven format or the more linear format of previous games, so it ends up kinda trying the latter at first (the opening sequence is very Last of Us) and then completely abandoning it and going back to memory-driven, and then making a few attempts to go back to linear for a while - which feels messier than it needs to. It's also practically *trying* to erase the first game's story despite being set as a direct follow-up - outside of a few token mentions, none of the previous game's events are acknowledged, and none of it feels like it actually mattered. Gameplay-wise, the same sort of thing happens. All the previous building blocks are there - you get an open world, you get puzzles you're essentially let loose to solve, you get stuff to find and faraway places to visit. The problem is, you also get a building mechanic that ultimately makes 99% of those things meaningless by solving all of them with the same 2 or 3 contraptions, and you get very little reason to use what remains of the old way of doing things. There were things that Tears absolutely did better. The dungeons, bosses and minibosses are way more varied, and I did enjoy getting to actually interact with the Sages rather than just having the Champions' passive buffs - but ultimately I feel like a lot of it is either rehashing or missing the point that Breath of the Wild did get right.

[@jamiecal11]

I do too. I hate when people say 'TOTK has so much stuff in it!" as if the quantity is the most important thing. I spent 100 hours down in the depths and really about 5 minutes of it.

[@BubblesChika]

Exactly. TOTK's content just feels for bloated for padding's sake. Nothing of substantial worth to see down and up in the Depths and Sky Islands

[@samf.s.7731]

Too much, but not enough Or A lot of nothing

[@Blockvard]

Breath for me was: exploring, oh what's that?, oh that's a nice view, oh some enemies and then repeat with a quest in between. Tears after tutorial was: enemy, enemy, korok who lost a friend, enemy, enemy, quest, enemy, enemy, Bolson.... It just felt like they wanted to do so much they messed up the pacing and made a world that I'd rather glance over with a hover bike than to traverse. It was just to much space and too much in it, I got burnt out and the fun went away. The mechanics was fantastic from a development pov. But I just couldn't get into the zonai stuff, and they didn't even bother to flesh out their history much. Fusion was cool but the progression of the color drops was wierd. Tears is a fantastic game but I just don't see myself playing another playthrough for awhile like I did with Breath.

[@jfncho]

Building things in TOTK got old real fast for me.

[@sadied0g]

I mean yea, but then you just stop building things

[@ericwindsor339]

The problem is that anything you can build sucks. The vehicles just aren't useful because they either can't fly, can't move quickly, can't deal with hills or are outrageously expensive. They needed to make them more powerful/cheaper/easier to summon to actually make them useful

[@maynardburger]

It doesn't take too long before there's just little point to 'inventing' devices because you'll already have some better way of achieving something, be it for traversal or combat or whatever. So it's not even a 'get out what you put in' sort of thing, it's just something to play with. Which is cool if that's what does it for you, and maybe if I was playing with a friend and just messing about for laughs I'd have done it more, but by myself, I just felt like it was this large kit of tools that I mostly didn't need.

[@chiquita683]

Facts. Only thing that was useful was using the duplicate item hack so you could keep good weapons. Every other part of building was boring

[@Chronoflation]

Not to mention it kinda ruined the exploration of the game to build travel devices since you really can't explore what's around any corners or in the trees, or fight anyone (without building some monstrosity) while flying around. Meanwhile driving just kinda sucks and the time you get from driving vs running before your battery runs up often doesn't even make up for the time it takes to build the device, even sometimes with autobuild

[@masonschwalm2010]

0:34 As a 36 yr old man, TOTK was the first time a video game gave me the same level of hype and excitement in the buildup to its release since I was a kid/in my early teens. In fact, ironically enough the last game I can think of where I remember feeling the same way leading up to its release would’ve been 22 yrs before that with Majora’s Mask lol (and that also even includes feeling the same sense of intrigue at the prospect of a darker, and more mature Zelda game this time around). Funny how things can come full-circle like that sometimes.

[@loganvest367]

Same for me.

[@RcKDrUmm3R]

TOTK is just too large, repetitive and similar to BOTW. I think if they trimmed the fat it would of been far superior

[@ChrisCarlos64]

I haven't finished TotK yet. I'm maybe 40 hours in. I'm taking my time, but I also realized much of the time I am not trying to use things like Ultrahand to build stuff as much. It's fun to explore with the physics of the world, but often times I'm more in menus than I felt I was in BotW and fusing stuff and moving them around is fun for little things, but it's too much time to build anything complex without gathering it all up and having the patience to do so. I almost wish it just let me do it in a 3D designer space that removed the Ultrahand part. Either way, it's a great game, but a sequel that suffers from all of its kind, the expectation of more, bigger, and better! It needed to add more things to not be an expansion pack, and while those things are great, it also removes much of what made BotW magical, the simplicity of everything. It was big enough to have just enough complexities without going over, but now the bathtub has overflown, and someone needs to clean up the mess.

[@itsadribtch_]

EVERYONE HAS BEEN HATING ME FOR SAYING THIS 😭😭. BUT I PREFER BOTW TOO!!

[@Tazer_Silverscar]

Kind of funny that you talked about nostalgia and... oh hey, Kass' Theme! I found the lack of Kass to be actually quite depressing. This might sound weird to be so hooked on one guy who isn't even a lead character, but Penn (the guy who does his role in TOTK) hasn't the charisma (or the music) Kass does. And I found it unsettling that the only person to mention Kass at all is in fact, him. Kass is married, with kids. And yet not one of those 6 characters even mentions him. I also felt it was quite unsettling travelling around Hyrule, and there seemed to be no evidence of the Divine Beasts. Based on what we hear about the end of the Calamity, it wasn't that long ago that they were there. And yet there's no explanation of why these massive lumbering mechanical machines were just... gone. The world is supposed to be still rebuilding. And yet, somehow they managed to make all the guardians, and all the other Sheikah tech disappear. With no explanation. I know some guardian parts went into the Skytowers, but there's not enough parts to justify there being NO guardians at all. Oddly enough, that made the world feel a lot more empty. And what they filled it with didn't have enough substance to it. I felt that because they'd reduced the active Zonai characters to two as well, it felt like we never really got to see what they were like. And I think there needed to be more. I think there needed to be more than two dungeons in the depths (yes, I know the boss of the Spirit Temple was in the depths too, but the dungeon is really split between Sky and Depths if you take into account the Thunderhead Isles). It felt like an area that overall was missing a lot of potential. Heck, I'd have taken that the Divine Beasts were dumped into the Depths due to them having lost purpose (I personally would have left them where they stopped, but eh...) if it meant seeing them again with some form of new purpose, potentially re-corrupted with a new form of sorts. Turn them into gigantic bosses at the end of extremely tricky dungeons or something. There's just so much potential...

[@peterkelly7695]

I think the biggest thing for me is I got TOTK on release day and still haven't finished it. I waited so long to finish BOTW because I loved it and didn't want it to end, with TOTK I feel like I can't finish it because there is so much left to do!

[@cameronc6114]

Does anyone else feel like... the horses just don't feel right in TotK? Like there is something so off and slightly frustrating about the horse riding, I don't know if it's just me. They were amazing in BotW but in TotK they are just so... like the commands don't register right. idk does anyone else know what I'm talking about?

[@nathanwilliams3423]

Not sure, but I have noticed that it’s harder to get horses to gallop from a standstill. I swear in botw I could double tap A super fast and do it, but in totk it takes a lot more spamming

[@cameronc6114]

@@nathanwilliams3423 that's exactly what i'm talking about

[@bctalicorn809]

I literally just beat the game tonight, didn't have the chance to pick it up because it's $70 and money has been really tight. So I've been playing it on my friend's Switch while he's away. And I must say, after the hype surrounding it had died down and I had the chance to play it spoiler free, it's an absolutely amazing game. I love it so much more than BOTW. It's funny to hear myself say that, because it really is essentially the same game again, just with more effort put in to the things that I really missed after playing Breath of the Wild. And that was high stakes/good story tension, and classic dungeon design. And yes, while the dungeons were still very simple, the ATMOSPHERE and "character" of the dungeons were back in full force, and I just enjoyed myself so much with them. They were a nice marriage of the BOTW openness and classic Zelda design. Even though you could complete the dungeon in any order, oftentimes the paths to them would be linear and actually built on the previous puzzles. I quite liked it. I would rather them go back to being maze-like, but it was a huge step in the right direction, to me at least. And THAT ENDING. I have not smiled that much playing a Zelda game. The sheer awe of jumping from one dragon to another... THIS is what BOTW was sorely missing. It feels like a very fitting and satisfying conclusion to the story, even if it's not particularly difficult once you've put 50+ hours in. There are a lot of different currencies and resources to manage, but at least most of them play an important role in gameplay now. It's not a perfect game, I don't think BOTW or TOTK are. The only game that gets close to being perfect is Link Between Worlds. But I think TOTK eased my worries about Nintendo going forward with this style of Zelda. Because the most important changes they made were subtle, but it worked so well. BOTW was always a mixed bag to me. Even on multiple playthroughs, I had to keep placing restrictions on how I played in order to enjoy it. But the time I had done 5 full playthroughs, I finally found my favorite way to play it. But in TOTK, I was able to enjoy it without having to place restrictions or play in a way that seemed different from what came naturally. It did take a while for the game to get its footing, but once it was found, it was in full force until the end.

[@Chronoflation]

Meanwhile, I like to play games going from focusing down one major objective to the next and found out Zelda's secret before even getting to the first dungeon, utterly ruining the "plot twist", completely breaking immersion as the game does virtually nothing to acknowledge Link's discovery of the truth with many characters still wondering and asking Link where so ever could the princess be gee golly gosh, and Link just doesn't say a word. Plus, those cutscenes aren't delivered in order if you don't jump back and forth across the map to purposefully do them in the order that you only find out about after going to the old, once Guardian filled, temple, so you can entirely miss that, and even have the beats of that story be totally ruined. My first scene after the tutorial one was literally the murder scene. Not to mention the scenes at the end of every dungeon. The story really was not designed to compensate for the open world as it was in BotW. The memories weren't an anthology collection like the memories from BotW, they were a linear tale, that most people would experience out of order. This all really bugged me. The gameplay was, of course, very refined and better in many ways over BotW. At the same time, it was a lot more cumbersome with some baffling decisions. Like, why can we not bulk craft and store different types of arrows so we don't have to open that menu every time we want to do the same thing over and over? It makes bow combat feel almost turn based. The depths offer a nice challenge at first, but once you adapt to it and master the basic challenge of the depths, basically the whole area ceases to be a challenge, and that's not really good when it's the size of Hyrule. The sky was also incredibly sparse with too many rinse and repeat island types and the same challenges over and over again with little variance between them. It's really unfortunate, cause it leaves TotK feeling like there's a lot of retreading the same ground and grinding for completion whereas BotW, for all of its faults, and there are many, the only really repetitious requirement was the koroks and the combat shrines. I mean, I found a bow tutorial shrine 50 hours into TotK, I did like 30 shrines that just involved finding the green rock in the overworld and bringing it to where it needed to go, I spent an hour sleeping in a bed at a stable to max out my horse capacity cause I otherwise would never unlock it cause I rarely ever use those beds or any other points earning stable feature. Plus, I hate ultrahand cause it uses a grid system that really prevents anyone from messing up that much, and when you do, it's obvious because the grids attach at weird angles, and, most of the time, I found the vehicles to just cause me to skip over cool overworld areas and not really explore them and they disappeared as soon as I went into a shrine. I really do see what so many people love about TotK, but there are so many design concepts that either contradict or exist just to waste time or were implemented in a way could be made so much more user friendly and less tedious that most players would think of the moment they played the game (again, like being able to bulk build a bunch of arrow. Bulk cooking would also be nice, or being able to open a recipe book in front of the cooking pot to instant cook things you've already made, stacking cooked items that are the same in the menu, like how baked apples stack, etc). I really hope Nintendo learns from their shortcomings and mistakes here to make a much better game next time. So far, open world Zelda is 0 for 2 for me, but I at least got enough fun from BotW. I ended up dropping TotK after all of the references to old games were made like they were big deal scenes (like Ganondorf kneeling to Rauru), when they clearly only existed for fanservice and to force the plot they came up with while they actually came out of nowhere and made no sense, even when putting the cutscenes in order. That and the dungeons disappointed me. They looked better, but they were basically slightly better Divine Beasts that removed the ability to move parts of the dungeon. They had some visually cool stuff, but fanservice that looks cool but doesn't feel cool to play just doesn't do it for me anymore. Coming out just after Metroid Prime Remastered really may have hindered my experience with TotK, cause I kept thinking the entire time that Metroid was just way more fun, challenging, and better structured

[@BubblesChika]

Fair enough, though I strongly disagree with everything you wrote as I found neither a Breath of the Wild feeling nor an Ocarina of Time feeling with this game. I wonder if you can stomach a second playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom

[@dugganater]

BOTW shows there is beauty in simplicity. TOTK leans more into the creativity side of people and there's many people who don't want to be creative when they play a game (understandably so).

[@samf.s.7731]

Eh, played Elden Ring where you can be much more creative with the builds. No, don't say it's about creativity, you know that's not true. It's not the adventure BoTW was, that's simply it. It's definitely not the adventure Elden Ring is, and even though that game is "hard" it still has that feeling that you were somewhere else, doing something otherworldly.

[@jacobhayles4135]

I like the botw abilities more. Stasis was so fun to launch yourself compared to recall, the fuse mechanic is great but it can be tedious at times. The ultra hand is fun at first but ended up being tedious. I prefer driving the master cycle or just having a few magnetic objects to play around with to solve puzzles. Finally the ascend ability was kinda cool but only allowed you to go up. Oddly enough the cryonis ability had cooler applications in defence, water traversal and puzzle solving as it was like something to solve or work out. Ascend is as simple or boring as ceiling=probably go through that. Also the guardians were cool and I miss them

[@jakehands]

For me: 1) map too big 2)the constructs were not as menacing as the guardians from BOTW. 3)shrine challenges were much easier than the ones in BOTW 4)the whole underground map was too big and repetitive. 5)the ability to ascend made it less of a challenge. Figuring out how to scale walls successfully was fun in BOTW.

[@JBird101010]

I have to agree Felix. BOTW was just a magical experience at the time. Going from Skyward Sword to BOTW was an unbelievable upgrade that I never could have anticipated. Although I did have a good time with TOTK, and I do think that it did improve some aspects of the BOTW gameplay. For me, the sense of scale and exploration especially for the first time felt so novel and new during my time with BOTW. Whereas with TOTK, even though there’s a lot to discover and explore, it is essentially an improved version of BOTW in a lot of ways. My time with TOTK was mostly frustrating. There wasn’t as much of that magical feeling of discovery for me. The depths were fun to explore but it kind of got repetitive and a lot of the time I was just trying to get from point A to point B. The building/fuse mechanic was definitely a lot more clunky than I thought it would be and became very frustrating and tedious for me as well.

[@Pheicou]

Imagine if instead of we getting Majora's Mask the way it is back in the N64, we would've gotten a sequel to OoT reusing the same Hyrule map but with just some new abilities and a different story, ..yeah people wouldn't care that much about that sequel years later. Nintendo really did make a few bad decisions with TotK.

[@bustero1498]

BOTW vs TOTK aside, your experience may have been flipped if, say, TOTK had already been out for a year and you did a second play through of it just before returning to BOTW for another play through of that. I may not have said that quite right, but if we could somehow flip the experiences of these two games (and I realize you really can’t given the nature of each), your thoughts on each may be flipped as well. I do find myself going back to BOTW and playing it again, but not quite at the place where I can give it a fair shake at starting it over for another play through since I’m not quite done with TOTK yet - I’ve done a lot in TOTK but with family and the busyness of life, I’m not quite done with the story of it yet. Almost there :)

[@Jdudec367]

How are you doing now in TOTK?

[@bustero1498]

@@Jdudec367 I finished the story of it about 2 1/2 months ago. Good times. Since then I also completed all shrines.

[@beauvogames]

If BotW were patched to have all the TotK polish, refinements and improvements, it would no doubt be considered the better game. For me it's that thing where TotK is the technically better game but BotW is the better experience. TotK has the polish and refinement - things like having a way to climb in the rain is SO USEFUL and all that kind of small stuff like the smoke coming from the stables, a better dowsing system too... but it didn't have that "first time experience" that BotW has and BotW is a bit less overwhelming, like TotK has more space but BotW uses that space better 😊

[@metalmilitia89]

The sky islands were underwhelming and after the first few jumps into the depths the novelty wore off.

[@loganvest367]

Parroted argument, sky Islands were massive and depths too.

[@feidamack2006]

​@@loganvest367 Imagine calling common criticism a "parroted argument" as if someone can't form complaints and opinions on their own.

[@metalmilitia89]

@@loganvest367 “how dare someone criticize something I like?” lol. Nintendo is not gonna love you buddy.

[@chiquita683]

Yup. After an hour in the depths I was done with them.

[@chiquita683]

​@@loganvest367sky islands were massive? Just empty randomly generated content in the air. The depths were the same, if they said both were randomly generated like No Mans Land it would have made more sense but the fact that someone sat and designed it makes a whole different level of lazy

[@mashymyre]

BOTW balances adventure and sandbox gameplay perfectly. TOTK is like 80% sandbox. It's a game about playing with your toys. I very much think BOTW is a lot better

[@DorminatorX]

TOTK was a grindfest. to light up all the underground was an absolute pain, as well as getting all the armor pieces that you need because ganondorf is pretty hard. as well as farming insane amount of flower bombs which again, are in the underground and you need to light it up. i loved the game but hell the grindfest in this game is absolute insane, tiring and make the replay value non existent. and i agree with you with so little sky islands. i mean this is the main problem.

[@Jon0387]

Could burnout be a reason? I’m catching up on my backlog and finally playing Breath of the Wild now. It sounds like I should probably take a break with other games when I finish Breath and start Tears.

[@giygas9305]

Probably. I only played 100 hours on BotW without finishing and I fear I will probably never return.

[@ilbroducciore]

Absolutely do this. Doing both back to back will get you burnt out very quickly through TotK.

[@Lwiis64]

It is definitely a factor. The more time you spent exploring Hyrule in BotW the less special TotK will be.

[@emmanuelle7662]

I think you should! I got my switch for Christmas and BOTW was my first Zelda game. I am atm 125+ hours atm with 3 divines beasts down and on my way to the last one. I think, I'll take at least a 6 months break before playing TOK to avoid burnout :)

[@Kruegernator123]

@@ilbroducciore I went from playing BotW for the first time since 2017 to TotK. I immediately went back to starting BotW on Master Mode.

[@VampireKa1n]

After playing BOTW, TOTK didn't have any sense of wonder or discovery. I've seen this world before, I've done this all before. The sky islands are cool but like you said few and far between. The starting area really was great and I was loving it. But then I got to the ground and just..... felt bored. Not much felt different. It felt like I was replaying BOTW with different abilities. I don't like the new abilities much either. I don't like the building amd fusing. I hate having to constantly stop what I'm doing to fiddle around a menu to fuse things. Using elemental arrows is so tedious now I didn't even bother. . Ascend is like a less fun Rivalis gale. The underground is boring. I got to Kakariko and just haven't touched it since.

[@jacksonmillard7598]

I understand your thinking, to me they are two different experiences and I love how BOTW is geared more toward exploration and TOTK is geared toward experimentation and as well as different kinds of exploration. To me TOTK feels more lived in. To me they are both fantastic but I have to give it to TOTK. It is just incredible! But I did love this video and loved hearing your thoughts.

[@koemon_exe]

I love how people like you can respectfully agree to disagree 😊

[@loganvest367]

TOTK just completely owns BotW

[@NaveRellim34]

I love both games and think they are both incredible. The fact that Nintendo didn't advertise the depths is absolutely insane.

[@jernfuglen]

I spent loads of hours on Breath of the wild, but Tears of the Kingdom didn't spark the same addiction. I maybe played 15 hours when it came out and didn't play it since.

[@xellostube]

I actually felt violated being forced to play the depth of TOTK. Worst addition ever in a game that lacks personality

[@Klatubarada1979]

It's a bit empty but I feel like it's KINDA an overall plus. BotW and TotK bost suffer from a lot of stuff I'm mid about, not to mention terrible dungeons

[@mackers_855]

I love TOTK so much more as it is an evolution on BOTW in everything that came before beyond addressing everything that was a nuisance from first game however 100% agree it could never and nothing will ever replicate that first walk out into Hyrule that made BOTW so amazing! Awesome vid as always

[@Al-ok1lj]

Totk was a copy/paste of an awesome cookie recipe with marshmallows and dark chocolate mixed in.

[@setradz_9192]

Which one should i get as my first zelda game? I loveee pretty graphic but i dont like overwhelming and complicated stuff.

[@syaieya]

While I absolutely loved both of my playthroughs of BOTW and TOTK, In both games I got about 3 dungeons in and felt like I had really seen everything there was to offer. Chests and side quests were not worth the expense of equipment to get, enemy types had been well exhausted and I was at a point of just putting the blinders on to get to the obvious goals. Genuinely, I do wish we got something more along the lines of a Majora's mask in a different world with similar elements. But instead this feels like we got two halves of the same game with a stilted transition for new powers.

[@pablofmc]

Yes, of course it is. In totk you can paraglide down from any sky island and the terrain was not made for wheeled vehicles. Also, the hoverbike trivializes everything. BotW is great because of its exploration aspect, something TOTALLY missing from totk

[@loganvest367]

Boring. Only mindless ppl want to just"explore" for the sake thereof. BotW was full of mmo quests, TOTK wasn't.

[@toonzelda3353]

​​@@loganvest367And mmo quests are a bad thing? Using that as an argument is pretty stupid. Some people might like that lol. You seem to be hating on other peoples opinions just because its something "you" dont enjoy.

[@minecrafter3448]

“Tears of the kingdom tries to do something different from breath of the wild which makes it worse” I hate you people. You’ll make up anything to jump on that bandwagon. This game isn’t about the exploration, why do you think they reused the map? It’s so you can go as quickly as possible to familiar places and see what changed. My favorite was tarrey town, but the lost woods were neat to check in on as well.

[@maynardburger]

You know you could just avoid using the hoverbike? Having something quite so broken probably wasn't intended by the devs even with all the freedom given. Things were supposed to be creative and freeform with Zonai devices, but also with compromises - hence vehicles not being great over a lot of terrain, bigger contraptions requiring more 'power' to lift the weight, combat options not necessarily doing a ton of damage, wings having limited life, etc.

[@loganvest367]

@@toonzelda3353 Yes it's bad. Pretty much all TOTK side content was fun. MMO quests... Not so much.

[@willfully3368]

I never felt rewarded for exploring BOTW ,so I didn’t. Especially as a Zelda fan BOTW was disappointing because it gave you these new versions of old locales but never gave you lore nor reasonable rewards (magic weapons were alright)for exploring what would seem like interesting locations. And these locations would often be nothing more than surface level.. no secret rooms or paths in any of these locations TOTK completely fixed that, the places with lore added a whole nother layer of lore through caves, actual lore dialouge/ more in depth story telling through the setting, cooler items/bosses/gear that felt well placed. TOTK was just what I always wanted BOTW to be PLUS more

[@loganvest367]

Yessir. BotW side quests were MMO quest. TOTK offered something not in any others game with ultrahand

[@miguelitoreyes5514]

The pure magic of experiencing the long awaited new Zelda and its awe-inspiring world, on the first hybrid console of its kind, could never be replicated. The launch for ToTK was special in a way totally its own, and that cant be replicated either. I'll always hold that midnight launch in my heart, just like BoTW's. But *the* reason why BoTW is so beloved and preferred by many is just due to the utter MAGIC of everything surrounding it at the time. Objectively, ToTK is better in many ways (in some ways its also objectively worse). And i would say its the better game overall and on some days I prefer it over BoTW (emphasis on "some") as a *game.* But I will always prefer the *experience* of BoTW because how could anyone not? They're both 10/10 masterpieces, though, and i dont think downplaying the triumphs of ToTK is necessary to articulate preference for BoTW.

[@trtl_playz]

I like BotW better just because the TotK story is confusing and feels more like a side quest than the main quests. Also I loved BotW for the combat but one having to start over with none of my armor is really annoying not to mention weapons have 0 durability so it's hard to just go hunt enemies for an hour or two or whatever.

[@AB-rh5yq]

I enjoyed TOTK, but the mandated story kept dragging it back for me while the absence of major story (or at least required story) in BOTW let me just enjoy the world/game. I kept coming back to BOTW after I beat it, it I haven’t touched TOTK since I finished it. It seems more intimidating to me because I know I’ll be required to do all of that story stuff again.

[@ThePETRAfication]

It's about way more than just nostalgia, or that magical first playthrough. And totk is not the objectively better game either. Totk has no identity. And I would argue it doesn't even fix half of the problems people had with botw. That alone makes it a bad sequel.The unique themes and bosses for each of the dungeons were appreciated, but save for the thunder temple, the divine beasts all had better puzzles and their bosses were harder too. old champion abilities were better. Uncovering the sorry through past memories was a new and unique idea and made sense in the context of Botw. Botw Zelda as a Character was better because she actually had a personality and individuality and wasn't just a spectator to all of the major events unfolding in totk until the very end. Also why does the master sword still suck after being "bathed in light" for thousands of years? 30 damage? That's pre champions ballad damage. Oh yeah and botw had genuinely awesome DLC. I restarted totk recently fully intending on completing another playthrough a year after I finished my first playthrough with 200 hours. Dropped it right after the GSI. could not be bothered to fiddle around in the menus for ultra hand and especially fuse, and seeing the map littered with garbage and random shit to do at every turn felt annoying and suffocating. Just padding to waste time, among other things. Restarted botw just to play the GP and ended up staying for a whole other playthrough, That makes 7 now at 525+ hours. Front to back botw is the better experience. Simplicity wins. Unless you really enjoy grinding and farming in your Zelda games, which is not what I play them for.

[@ZXaber78]

TOTK felt like an expansion pack that covered Hyrule in trash that I had to clean up.

[@saxoman1]

Bingo

[@facilityhues]

I think that because Tears of the Kingdom is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, it was always destined to live in its shadow., especially because many of Tears of the Kingdom's improvements are less visible. I like to think of the two as one massive gaming experience, and I will always love both.

[@Anni_ka]

Yes! They evoke different feelings for me, but just because they are different, doesn't mean one is better than the other

[@loganvest367]

The improvement are gigantic, but the ppl downplaying them are simply nostalgic and refuse to accept it lol.

[@CrowTRobot]

This and the focus on building contraptions, were the two things that hurt it for me. Still a great game but BotW is so much more tempting to revisit and experiment with.

[@loganvest367]

@@CrowTRobot you wanna experiment but don't like building.. hmm... Weird

[@CrowTRobot]

@@loganvest367 I like to experiment and mess around but the building mechanic in TotK wasn’t my favorite. 🤷‍♂️

[@KnightrideThrillz]

In my opinion, Totk is an objectively better game, but BotW just has this sense of wonder and awe and nostalgia even that 1-ups it for me

[@thisguyrighthere8502]

Doing a no fast travel playthrough in totk would be so much fun, it would force you to create all kinds of vehicles to get around

[@gabrielcaro]

Goes without saying. Tears of the kingdom is pretty much just more of the same.

[@toonzelda3353]

Same TOTK didnt really add enough to make it distinct and unique. Just felt like more BOTW and nothing else. There was also too much happening at once having 3 layers of exploration. The sky was big but empty with no villages or personality to it. Just a bunch of rock like structures floating. The Zonai creation mechanic was cool at first but eventually your creations just fall apart like sticky glue and it no longer feels fun to build anything anymore. I honestly love every game BOTW and before it but TOTK is the first Zelda game to bore me and not want to finish. BOTW I invested like tons of hours on switch and definitely more than TOTK as well!

[@loganvest367]

​@@toonzelda3353Sky was not empty unless you are blind, this is a parroted argument. The sky garden is the size of a continent alone and it's amazing.

[@nickharman2064]

It's the "Pt. 2" or Club DJ remix of the original hit song

[@vibingLieke]

@@loganvest367 might not be empty but the islands are almost all copy pasted and super similar

[@FrostyIgnition]

Both games are amazing. You can’t really complain. Compared to all the other Zelda games they were incredible

[@MeneerSoepgroente]

Have to say agree with you, Felix. I agree with all your points, and I want to add one more that you almost touched upon. This is the difference in traversal between the two. In BotW it was always questions of "Can I go up here? Can I make it across this chasm?". If you managed it, it often was down to skill and ingenious climbing techniques. And if you failed, more than once you'll end up in a new location to explore, like the bottom of that chasm. Meanwhile in TotK, thanks to ultrahand (and autobuild), there is never that same question. You can get anywhere you want if you have enough resources. And if you don't, you just have to farm some more materials and you're good to go. Sure, BotW has rain and that was an extremely annoying mechanic. But when it didn't rain, traversal was epic. And I missed that in TotK, as in that game moving around the world felt trivial.

[@56ty_]

I agreed with you till a couple of days ago. I recently started a new run in totk trying to detach myself from botw (it’s my favorite game). Honestly totk is incredible. The traversal is not trivial. It’s just fundamentally different from the one in botw. It’s great for both newcomers and longtime fans. It’s closer to the Mario type of fun. But you still have limitations. Pretty genius in my opinion. We spent 6 years slowly climbing every surface of hyrule. Now they gave us they keys to the skies. (I still wish there was more to explore in the sky islands though)

[@RuFiOoo21]

@FelixSandwichez you are definitely not alone. I wholeheartedly agree that Breath of the Wild is the superior "experience" (and still the G.O.A.T.) and it's not just because of nostalgia. On the contrary, I've been gaming for a bit longer than you and actually lost hope that any game would recapture the magic of playing Ocarina of Time in 1998 for the first time. I've played games across all systems but I've been a loyal Nintendo fan since the original Super Mario Bros. and even stuck it out through the dark ages of Skyward Sword and the Wii U. I was ready to give up my favorite hobby until that nuclear bomb of a trailer dropped on Jan of 2017 (yeah you know the one) signifying that maybe just maybe Nintendo was back. And then BotW ended up being such a special experience that it not only recaptured the magic of OoT in the modern era (such significant game design leaps get more and more difficult as time goes by), but it also brought back so many jaded gamers like myself back into the fold and will forever be inextricably linked to the successful launch of the Switch and Nintendo's return to the mountaintop. Tears of the Kingdom didn't quite have that cultural zeitgeist moment. But impact and meta-narrative aside, I think that BotW was just a much more focused and cohesive experience, exhibiting far greater synergy between all of its design elements.

[@EternalKratos91]

I don't like the ultra hand feature in this game. For people who are more creative this thing is probably a blast, but not for me... Most puzzles were about putting a few things together. For me this felt kinda boring...

[@lukebrockbank4542]

I agree man. I was so hyped for TOTK and it's one of the only games I've payed full price for right as it came out. I loved the first little bit, I was having so much fun. But then I had that same thing where I just hit a moment where I suddenly realized I wasn't really having fun anymore. I wasn't thinking about the game when I wasn't playing it, like I still do with BOTW. I agree, TOTK is an amazing game, but BOTW just has something special.

[@PhantoZX]

"I could t believe there was no dlc " ....diddnt he just say he wanted LESS to do as it was too overwhelming?!?!?

[@loganvest367]

Welcome to streamers. Say stupid fake stuff to generate clicks

[@coolgreek79]

I prefer BOW because it was more grounded to reality and the abilities had a logic behind them. But TOTK abilities they were funny in a way... I mean making a giant robot i just couldn't take it seriously 😅. And in BOW you had a goal to climb a mountain for example... But in TOTK you just auto build a hover bike and off we go

[@minecrafter3448]

Sure let’s use a Wii U gamepad to summon a holographic comically large projectile magnet and pick up an unbreakable all metal bookshelf to destroy some mechs. Very realistic. “More realistic” Does not work. Ultrahand is literally telekinesis plus magic glue and an engineering degree, that’s the most realistic a Zelda gimmick has ever been. Realism doesn’t actually matter, it’s a fantasy action adventure rpg.

[@coolgreek79]

@@minecrafter3448 Nobody mentioned the Wii U... And when i said more realistic feeling i meant the logic of the whole game... Like in the example i mentioned... Think how you used to reach the top of a mountain in BOW and How in TOTK... Personally i was climbing... Not hover biking... The approach was realistic not the whole game.

[@minecrafter3448]

@@coolgreek79 you clearly didn’t understand a thing I said, reread my comment

[@ricekrispies1917]

Frankly I'm rather tired of people saying it was a feat of engineering and that that alone makes it better. No it doesn't, not when the rest of the game is such a mess, that can't be ignored... The experience will always make or break the game for me, and Botw captivated something special that Tears just didn't. Totk was a jumble of unconnected and underdeveloped ideas that alone or in concept, are kind of awesome, had very obvious potential, but together just did not mix well or live up to fan expectations. Had it not been trying to be Botw, I think a lot of it would of had the room to grow into it's own identity

[@vivid8979]

I think the issue here is that the fan's expectation reached to heights even themselves can't meet anymore... The long wait for the release and repeated delays (again) didn't helped as well... I'm playing TotK still today and while yes there are indeed design flaws like the quick hot bar and Sage's abilities.. The sheer number of ways you can play and approach this game compared to BotW and heck even any open-world is just astonishingly high... Plus it's so polished that everything just work is a nice bonus.. Yes, it doesn't give you the novelty and awe BotW did back in 2017 but I curated my own expectation way before release that I will reexplore the same map and since I really love this Hyrule to the point that I memorized majority of the point of interest and NPCs from BotW just made my playthru magical in it's own right. It feels like I'm revisiting my Grandma's house years later and eating that favorite stew or cookies she used to cook for you and it still tasted really good. Heck even better since I refined my taste since I'm grown up now...

[@nocookienolife]

Exactly my feelings. All games will have flaws but ToTK makes up for them by sheer innovation and creativity of its mechanics.

[@BagaJr]

I like TotK more than BotW, but I still think BotW is more impressive and impactful. It's the same with OoT: I think MM and WW and TP are all better than that game, but OoT was a completely new awe-inspiring experience, while the later ones stuck to that formula and added to it. BotW and OoT are the innovative games, while their respective follow-ups are the iterative games, and they all have their place. It seems like they will keep iterating on BotW's formula for the next several mainline games, but I wonder when the next big reset for Zelda will be.

[@spikesagal]

I definitely liked BOTW better than TOTK as well, for these reasons, in order of importance: #1. Means of exploration. In BOTW, the best way to travel was either on foot or on horseback. Taming a horse was always enjoyable and accessible, so not having a stable nearby was never really a problem. This encouraged me to really explore every nook and cranny of Hyrule, at least until I discovered a new fast travel point. By contrast, in TOTK, the best way to travel was to go up into the sky and beeline it down to wherever you're trying to go. This basically eliminated a lot of the exploration from the game, and instead replaced it with just trying to find the most efficient route to your destination. #2. Ultra hand. I know that creating machines was a high point for most players, but not for me. I found it tedious, and often time pointless. While it's useful for travel in certain places, it's just entirely unnecessary for combat. #3. Rauru's Blessing shrines. Just give me a Light of Blessing and move on, I don't need to go through three loading screens! Or better yet, replace them with more puzzle or combat shrines. Thinking about these still upsets me to this day. #4. That final Ganondorf (in human form) fight was really boring. It's just a dude that swings a sword at you. I'm sure there was more, but these are just the things that jumped out at me. While I didn't 100% BOTW, I probably did more than 90%; while after I beat Ganondorf in TOTK, I just put the game down and called it quits.

[@loganvest367]

Man no one thinks calamity Ganon was better than dueling Gannon lol.

[@HungryWarden]

@@loganvest367I do. At least, as a concept. Calamity Ganon is much easier, but Ganondorf is such a boring boss fight in terms of design and concept. It’s funny how the health bar going up was the only thing noteworthy about this fight. And the game stops you from traveling away, which is annoying. The hitboxes on his attacks are kinda janky. For some reason you can backflip out of his spin attack, but only 50% of the time.

[@loganvest367]

@@HungryWarden it was a fantastic fight, youll complain about anything to justify nostalgia lmao

[@minecrafter3448]

This isn’t a hot take. This is the coldest take there ever has been. Thanks Zelda cycle, see you all in 10 years when you think it’s a masterpiece again

[@RBN406]

This feels like a typical opinion ~1 year out from a massively hyped game. 2-4 years from now people will come back around and say this is the best Zelda

[@jeffmiles4356]

Yup. I feel like the only game this never happened with was skyward sword and even then it’s taken a huge positive spin since it’s release. I think when people go back and do a full play through of botw they’re gonna miss so much of what totk brought and that’s when it’ll shift

[@dumpstairs7305]

Really interesting video ! To me, BOTW is the better game to discover for the first time. But TOTK is the better game to live in. Way more things to do and experiment once you got over the explorations part. PS: Coming back in Hyrule Totk made me feel like Alan in the old movie Jumanji. That scene when he runs down the stairs yelling : Mom! Dad ! I’m baaaack! but it’s been so long and everything has evolved in your absence

[@hamilton381]

Felt it. Stopped after like 100h and did not want to com back. Probably I'll play botw again and not totk. Greetings from Brasil.

[@lordeilluminati]

one hot take I have is it wouldnt matter if totk had a different map, if the template of the game was exactly the same it would still be criticised for being breath of the wild again in a different location. What I notice is that many people that love Breath of the Wild were expecting was for Nintendo to replicate the same sense of surprise but the issue with this logic is that it can only be done once. When you try to surprise twice it becomes predictable, so that is what they were going for.

[@amysteriousviewer3772]

I agree with this. I can see why people might prefer BotW due to its simplicity and nostalgia but in a vacuum TotK is the superior game on basically every level.

[@JustinGarfield1]

BOTW is so much cohesive, intrigute. Totk is like the makers got high as fuck and added a lot of fun junk. Like "if you like street fighter, wait till street fight 3000 comes out, you can do fireballs hydokeens made of bourbon fire ball whiskey. It gets them drunk then you can do a upper cut made of brass knuckles springs". They should get rid of the depths. Make islands a lot better, and expand all the caves.

[@Jdudec367]

Not really. Nah they added the new stuff carefully really. Nah the Depths added a lot really. Nah the caves already have a lot and Islands aren't that bad.

[@JustinGarfield1]

@@Jdudec367 the depths are so boring

[@Jdudec367]

@@JustinGarfield1 not really tbh

[@JustinGarfield1]

@@Jdudec367 what is so exciting about it? The whole thing looks basically the same

[@ihatealderney]

​@@Jdudec367Seriously, what do you find so good about it? Past the initial awe it's literally just an inverted version of the surface with copy-pasted points of interest and meaningless nostalgia-bait clothing recycled from BotW amiibos.

[@Schilddruse]

I always thought the same thing. TotK is the objectively better game but I still like BotW more. TotK felt kinda directionless to me. It actually had too much going on and not everything was thought completely through. But what I disliked the most was, that TotK completely failed in terms of being a sequel to BotW. Apart from having (mostly) the same characters and overworld, it was as if the events of the first game never happened. The game tried so much to be its own thing, that it forgot to link (hehe) to its predecessor. Where are all the remnants of the Shiekah-tech and why is nobody mentioning their vanishing? Why is nobody mentioning the Calamity? How exactly did Ganon cause the Calamity from under the castle? Where is Kass? Why was so much left unsaid and unexplained coming from the first to the second game? Even without taking the Zelda-timeline into consideration (which is a whole mess in and of itself) the game feels isolated in its story and world even though it is supposed to be a DIRECT sequel to BotW.

[@Lwiis64]

Failing to feel like a sequel is a huge narrative problem. Some NPCs (like Huson) acknowledge what happen in the last game while others (like Bolson) completely ignore it as if Link never met them. The vast majority of NPCs don't even mention the Calamity, the Champions, the Devine Beasts or the Guardians (despite the Calamity ending only a few years ago) while in the Hateno School there is a side quest about it. This type of disconnect proves the devs wanted to acknowledge the game is a sequel whenever was convenient while simultaneously ignoring it whenever it wasn't.

[@Jdudec367]

@@Lwiis64 Bolson doesn't completely ignore Link, he just doesn't make a big deal out of it. I guess that makes sense, at that point for most of them they wouldn't be relevant really. Not really, there is no disconnect.

[@nicholasdocter4975]

I think I agree. In TotK, there's more to do, but it feels diluted and less tailor-made than other Zelda games. I recently played other Zelda-esque games such as Alundra for PS1 or Crosscode for PC. They are both more linear experiences and arguably simpler than TotK, but the magic of tailor-made content in those games is apparent.

[@MrFishdot1]

I think the depths and sky islands needed to be WAY more fleshed out, the only good sky island was the tutorial island and the depths was overly repetitive

[@MatveySchmidt]

Fair video, but it seems to me that it’s 80% bound to your personal experience (playing right after a 3rd playthrough of BOTW, spoiled Depths, etc.). What helped me is seing TOTK as a BOTW Part Two. This allowed me forgiving some redundancies. And, of course, the revolutionary mechanics. Even if I love BOTW (I still prefer Divine Beasts over TOTK’s temples, which freaked me out in 2017), I cannot think of any significative aspect that has not been improved in TOTK…

[@taanwallbanks9841]

Story in TOTK is far worse imo (or at least, the way it's told) Botw's story is far more episodic as we learn about the world and link and zelda, so the memory system works Totk's story is entirely linear, and you can visit the sword tear by death mountain. said tear literally has flashbacks to the other tears, most of which i hadn't seen yet at this point, and shows zelda becoming dragon, and sonias death, ruining literally every single plot beat the game had planned. totk also, despite being a sequel to botw feels like its allergic to botw? Like what happened to all the sheikah stuff? why is there only 1 guy who knows kass, etc. What's the point of the zonai? They're literally the shiekah but goat. the exact same, but instead of blue its green. Why bother with the false intrigue over nothing?

[@huckahuck]

They killed off Kass in TotK, so it's automatically worse than BotW

[@sadied0g]

First argument for BotW being better that I can get behind

[@RBN406]

I prefer Penn

[@PeJota615]

I like BotW better than TotK. You pretty much summed it up. BotW was very focused on that solitary exploration and discovery. TotK felt like they just took BotW and slapped some other game mechanics on top of it. As fun as it is to build things, it actually kinda breaks the game if you're intending to abuse the system. Also, building things didn't really tie into many parts of the game. You're rarely forced to create anything very complex to overcome puzzles or challenges. The game doesn't box you in and force you to build something with limited options. Just think about it, you literally do not have to use the building mechanics to fight the final boss. It really felt like a tacked on ability, that while cool and fun to use, it wasn't absolutely integral to the core gameplay most of the time.

[@Jdudec367]

I mean...not really, absuing the system isn't really that easy. I mean they do, they do tie into puzzles and exploration and stuff. Eha t times you kinda are though. It does though especially in Shrines. Not really, not using the building mechanic for the final boss doesn't make it a tacked on ability. Nah at times it was pretty integral.

[@susiemiller2621]

BOTW was brand new open world exploration wonderment. TOTK is an engineering game on top of massive exploration. I love BOTH for that reason. 🎉

[@tristanneal9552]

Humans crave novelty, it's a well known facet of our brains. The second time through a world is simply never going to feel as exciting and magical as thr first. However, i enjoyed TotK more for a feeling of coming home, and in that way i got a sort of wistful and nostalgic experience compared to BotW. Different experiences, less exciting but also better in some ways.

[@hypnoticwinds21]

Divided household here: I’m TOTK, partner is BOTW. I played 225 hours in BOTW… and I didn’t feel compelled to do anything except explore, and open up a crab farm in Lurelin Village. The map has been meticulously combed over, and there the Divine Beasts sit, waiting for me to try them out. I am a person who functions best with a to-do list, and BOTW didn’t give me one. So I became a marine biologist with a crab-route down Lurelin’s peninsula every day, and it was peaceful… but I’m just going to do that forever. TOTK gave me a to-do list. I have so much to do, and I get gratification and momentum from it. I’m now at the end of the game, where all I need are Koroks and to plunge in and go after Ganondorf… and I ran out of steam at the end, about 165 hours in. Side note: I’m also very bad at combat, and I feel the stun-lock in TOTK is more forgiving, and it actually turned combat into something I enjoyed, versus something I really avoided in BOTW. My partner prefers BOTW immensely. He hates the to-do list mentality, it clutters what needs to be accomplished and the quietness and joy of exploration for him. Anyways, both are masterpieces. I really should put 8-10 hours into refreshing my gameplay and going after Ganondorf, eh?

[@emmanuelle7662]

What do you mean about having a todo list in ToK? Sorry, I havent played it yet :)

[@BubblesChika]

That's why your partner's right to prefer Breath of the Wild. You don't run out of steam playing BOTW, thus it motivates you to replay it. With TOTK being as cluttered as it is, it sucks all the replayability out of it like a hoover, imo

[@BrosciuttoJZ]

BotW was incredible, TotK was essentially more of the same. TotK lost the adventurous aspect for me that kept me going back and exploring BotW. Honestly, it was also open world fatigue. I have less time to plunge into a huge world now than I did 7 years ago. I just want a linear game where I don’t have to worry if I missed a story beat just because I forgot to fall into a ditch

[@lawrence703]

I thought the memory mechanic in BoTW was so good and I did worry about how they could do it again. It's so hard to create a story when you know the player could experience things in any order.

[@andrewmalfavon2]

“‘Tears of the Kingdom’ was better, ‘Breath of the Wild’ was just more magical” sums up my exact feelings perfectly. Thanks, Felix.

[@sonicsean34]

I’m glad Felix enjoyed the OOT dungeons as so many people dismissed that viewpoint by longtime fans as nostalgia cos BotW was so new and shiny and OOT was old etc so it’s good to see someone who played it after BotW feeling similar. if he hasn’t played Majora or Twilight I hope he gets to those cos they have great dungeons and enjoyable stories (and Wind Waker at least looks nice with its locations even tho I feel the gameplay is weaker) I never got around to TotK cos I burnt out on BotW with how it told its story and its lacklustre dungeons despite loving the overworld. I had hoped they’d bring the great open world and mix traditional storytelling and traditional dungeons into it, like a mega version of Zelda 1 but from all accounts they didn’t. I’ll prob do my yearly “get a bit further in BotW” thing and finally finish it but I dunno when I’ll get around to TotK cos of that.

[@freya1548]

I have finished BOTW, I quit TOTK and haven't really gone back. I went back a few weeks ago and asked myself why am I playing this? I am bored. And maybe its because I over did on it when it came out and started over collecting and trying to 100% the game before I finished the story.

[@loganvest367]

Sounds like you need to take personal responsibility and don't blame the game.

[@jada8047]

He's sayin they made it so big its hard to 100 percent complete the game..​@loganvest367

[@mattrodgers157]

The game feels like one chore after the next

[@loganvest367]

@@mattrodgers157 calling things in a video game a chore shows there's something wrong with you lol. Even in the lowest quality games I've never felt that way

[@mattrodgers157]

@@loganvest367 bro there’s nothing wrong with me. Taking the korok to find his buddy for the 600th time just isn’t fun. Helping dude hold up his sign for a rice ball isn’t either. I’d rather do actual chores such as picking up dog shit than do another of those.

[@ICharlyl]

ToTK is a 100-120 hour game with content of a 20-30 game repeated like 6 times over and over again.

[@loganvest367]

No, it's not. This is a made up lie lol. No puzzle is ever repeated.

[@tountoes1677]

This is stupid and utterly false, I can smell your bias from here.

[@ICharlyl]

Of course it's false in the complete sense of the sentence, but I don't think it's 100% false. Sky islands are mostly copy pasted and even the original ones have mostly the same tasks as other ones. The depths are mostly the same thing over and over again. The overworld is littered with the same sign guy, mostly the same caves and wells, the same 3-4 bosses, mostly the same missions like the music people in the wagon, the tears that reveal the clips of story, the same cutscenes of the sages recalling the encounter with ganondorf, maybe even the same dialogue repeated. I still enjoyed the game, but ignoring the blatant recycled content is turning a blind eye. What I meant with my comment is that if the game was stripped of all the recycling and was left with actual new and creative contend it would be around 20-30 hours. But I'll concede and say it's probably like 40-50 if we consider all shrines are original content even if it's decor is the same 120 times. I wanna reiterate that even with these flaws the game is a solid 7 or 8/10. Even with it's repetitiveness they did something special, but it's not perfect or a masterpiece at all. The code may be, not the direction.

[@tountoes1677]

@@ICharlyl I mean I get it and I do agree somewhat, it's just that I don't understand people saying this about totk when botw majorly suffered from the same issues, it's just as repetitive, perhaps even more because it has less variety compared to totk

[@ICharlyl]

@@tountoes1677 I feel that ToTK brought all the issues with both games to the spotlight. Botw felt special because it was the only one in it's kind and everything felt revolutionary and groundbreaking, more so because it was released after people were getting tired of the old Zelda formula. I actually believe ToTK stained botw's legacy somewhat. I may sound like a hater, but I do believe that loud criticism (the only criticism corporations listen to) can lead to them improving the next game. They did a direct sequel without improving much in ToTK because Botw was regarded as a masterpiece, so I sincerely hope that they listen and hopefully make a new game with 50 or 75% less scale but more density and variety.

[@TheDreadedZero]

It pisses me off that I said this on day one and everyone jumped down my throat.

[@loganvest367]

It was stupid day one, still stupid now.

[@vibingLieke]

@@loganvest367 other people have differing opinions 🤯

[@athorem]

These days we have to wait around 6-12 months before expressing an opinion on a game is allowed by a fandom

[@TheDreadedZero]

@@athorem EXACTLY. I posted this exact opinion on gamefaqs and on some KZbin videos and literally everyone was like “oooohhhhh look, it’s the hipster that has to not like whatever’s popular.”

[@Rickeay]

I think I figured out why I didn't like totk as much as botw 1. In totk it felt like they wanted to do so much, but things were neglected, empty sky islands and depths. Depths and sky quests and colonies would have fixed that, Robbie goes down there to explore then just leaves, missed opportunity. 2. The story was so much better in botw too, the memories were able to be played out of order and not spoil anything, and made sense, 3. botw was quest dense, while totk was stretched out with less quest density. 4. I also agree with him that because it was links quest alone in botw, it felt better to explore, in totk, it feels like you are being handheld by the sages and being told exactly what to do by purah.

[@AdventuresAwait123]

I love BOTW but as someone with not much time on my hands, I love the action and immediate playability of Tears more. The story was very touching and gave Zelda's choices weight.