Tears of the Kingdom: A Disappointing Masterpiece

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the biggest, most ambitious game ever published by Nintendo. It marks the culmination of almost 40 years of the series' history, and is a technical marvel. But is it a good game? Are its world, mechanics, dungeons and story up to the high standards of the Zelda series? Let's find out.

or Instagram: @zeltikinsta
► Music in this video:
Nintendo

Sources:

Gameplay footage used:

0:00 Intro
15:49 Hyrule
37:50 Link
56:55 Dungeons
1:25:03 Story
2:03:28 Conclusion
2:08:11 The Next Zelda
2:10:47 Outro

#Zelda #Nintendo #tearsofthekingdom

[eliack]

The depths under Eldin was actually very exciting because the biome was different, i don't know why each region wasn't different like Eldin.

[LupercalRising]

Honestly we were all so hyped for the Sky Islands and the best one was the tutorial island.

[rxdy]

Biggest question for me is: Why couldn't we have played in the ancient past? They did such a good job of setting up the environment and atmosphere with new characters and an engaging plot where lots of battles take place and many quests could have occurred. It would solve the problem of being the same overworld Hyrule and NPCs. I think it would've been a refreshing move.

[Turnips]

One thing I noticed about how I explored the game differently is I never walked anywhere in TotK, I always flew down from above. To get to new areas of the map, I'd usually just fly down.

By the end of the game, I realized there was so much of the surface I hadn't explored yet, while in BotW I made a point to go everywhere I could.

I think the familiarity with the map and the ability to cheese it by flying actually took away from my exploration of the surface.

[wifi]

The fundamental problem with the story, is that the Zelda team's policy of making stand-alone games clashes with the concept of a direct sequel in the same world.

[McManthony]

It feels like "The Imprisoning War" was A fight, not so much a war. They could have shown the WAR from each of the sages perspective. With the ruin that happens to their homes and people. Instead of the same cut scene from the same simgle fight.

[Veo]

Speaking of NPC's not knowing Link anymore, it's more than a little frustrating that the people in Hateno village don't seem to know Link at all. Even if you ignore Link's involvement in Hateno village in BotW, Link is the personal body guard of Zelda, who has been living in Hateno village for a while. The people there clearly know and even miss the princess, so how they don't know Link, I don't know.

Tarrey town was also frustrating. Hudson and Rhodson know Link, but the other residents of the town act like they don't know him at all, despite the fact that many of them were recruited to live there by Link, worked with Link on building the town, and even all attended Hudson and Rhodson's wedding together.

Bolson should remember Link. . . Come on. Not only did Link make an impression on him, but they both attended a mutual friend's wedding together. Heck, Link is the one who sent him the invite to the wedding.

Same with Hetsu. He's probably a long-lived being, so there's no way his memory is so short.

[serenepastel]

This might be a shallow criticism, but between the initial trailer with mummified Ganon and reveal of the depths, I thought the game was going to be creepier. Like TOTK would be the Majora of the Wild duo. This isn’t really a valid criticism because I acknowledge it’s my own preconceptions that sway me, but that’s all I can really add to the conversation. You already covered everything else so well!

[Hanakin-Sidewalker]

To this day, I’m still salty that almost no one in the world seems to recognize Link and what he did for them. It felt like my journey in BotW was completely invalidated.

[Iveloss]

I definitely think the depths and the caves should have been combined.
A maze of endless tunnels which seem to just go deeper and deeper, occasional pockets of open space just revealing how far under the earth you really are. It would make exploring it a real challenge, both of your skill and ability to navigate. It would also be fun to drop into a well only to realize after minutes that there isnt going to be an end.

[williamwolfe]

It's crazy to me that Aonuma would say something like, "How can you want the old Zelda when its so restrictive compared to the freedom of the new Zelda". Its like saying, "How can you want any other toy when you have Legos? You have unlimited freedom to make whatever you want with Legos!" Legos are only as fun as the creativity you want to pour into them. Sometimes I dont want to play with Legos, I want a curated experience! Like you said, restriction and context are sometimes more fun than being able to break every puzzle with a rocket shield. Otherwise we'd play every game in debug mode and just fly around and wall clip and be unkillable. Sometimes that makes stuff fun, but mostly it gets boring really fast.

[Sovereign]

bro imagine if Farosh, Naydra, and Dinraal joined us during the final fight

[brandonhelcher]

I decided early to find all the dragon tears, this caused several story problems. Link knows what happened to Zelda and where she is, yet:
He'll continue to chase rumors around the kingdom.
He refuses to tell Paya the "Zelda" that warned her about the ring ruins was false.
He acts surprised at Hyrule castle.

At the very least, the final memory should of been locked behind certain story progression. Before that, even with every other memory, you could argue that while Link (and the player) has pieced together what happened. He doesn't definitively know, and is desperate for it not to be true, so would be willing to chase any lead.

[zibberebbiz]

I enjoyed exploring the depths so much, and when I finished activating all light roots, I felt so empty and I realized the entire depths is the same

[madhuvjk]

I have lots of gripes about TOTK some of which you mentioned - but I think the biggest thing is they just copy pasted the plot from BOTW but with a different context. Something happens to Link, he wakes up, princess is gone, everything that matters happened in the past, big evil scary Ganon in Hyrule castle, collecting memories again to peace the past together…you get the gist. It was not new or interesting. Even more infuriating was then recycling the OOT narrative plot of Ganondorf’s betrayal.

I think Nintendo’s aim for TOTK was to focus on the game mechanics they couldn’t introduce in BOTW. And then they slapped a half baked plot and same map relatively on it. The care and attention that the team gave to the beauty of BOTW - TOTK did not receive.

[AJ-xcnm]

A sequal that pretends botw doesnt exist and acts like none of the events that occurred in that game actually happened. This is my biggest irk with totk.

[RedShirt]

My biggest complaint for TotK was seriously it’s absolute lack of connection with BotW. It feels more like an entirely different Zelda game with a different story that was never supposed to be a sequel to BotW, that happens to have all the same characters and the same Hyrule

[skinsthewin]

The sad part for a game that supposedly focuses on the Zonai.... Is that we learned almost NOTHING about them! Hell, they're barely even shown in the game! We still have just as many if not more questions about the Zonai as we did before we played the game....

I expected to be steeped in the lore of the Zonai, only to be left grossly disappointed with the Narrative of this game as a whole. I absolutely LOVE the gameplay iself, but man... The story & how poorly it's both presented and written really takes the experience down for me.

[nonenot]

I was so bummed to see the sky island had no society living among all those islands. Litterally just a bunch of bots.

[AndreFengo]

Wow. The hype for Totk died down so extremely fast. Botw stayed strong for 5 years. All we got from Totk were twitter clips of people building tanks for a week then all the hype disappeared, lol.