Listen, I love both the open-world Zelda games. At the end of the day, no open world games match them when it comes to being a playground for your imagination. The stuff you can do in these games is wild. At the same time though, Tears of the Kingdom never made the same impact as Breath of the Wild for me for one primary reason: exploration. I was completely blown away by Breath of the Wild because I had no idea what to expect. Nintendo's marketing leading up to that game pretty much hid most of the game. It was incredibly exhilarating leaving the great plateau for the first time, and being gobsmacked by just how big the map was. Seeing my first labyrinth off in the distance made my jaw drop. There was so much cool shit to uncover, and never knowing what was around the corner made Breath of the Wild to me a special game. I fell in love with that world.
With Tears of the Kingdom, I initially thought it was a great decision to reuse the map because I love the idea of seeing a world I was familiar with evolve. I wanted to see a Hyrule that was in a rebuilding phase, and thought the team would be able to add a bunch of crazier things onto the map now that they don't have to create the geography from scratch. Well, that didn't end up happening... We got 1 new town. One. Hyrule Castle wasn't all that different, and acted once again as the final dungeon. Revisiting a lot of the other towns left me underwhelmed as well. Oh cool, Rito Village is completely covered in snow! I wonder what's going to happen after I clear the dungeon. Oh, it just returns to how it was in Breath of the Wild. Seriously? Why did they do that for so many locations? It's the same with Zora's Domain, Goron City, and Lurelin as well. I was so disappointed when the game built up the idea of Lurelin being taken over by pirates only for it to amount to a bunch of Bokoblins that I have to fight plus some busywork to get it back to the state that it was in the previous game. I think it's disappointing that these locations get less interesting the more you play. Kakariko's state of affairs is completely new, which is fine I guess, but that also extends to my point that there are no quests tied to the locations that are as interesting as in Breath of the Wild. I remembering arriving in Kakariko for the first time, and just spending an entire night meeting all the townspeople and doing quests for them. When it culminated in a shrine and a neat little resolution to all the events that led up to that moment, I felt greatly rewarded that I built a connection to the little village and it's people. Not here though.
I don't know man. I feel like they could have done so much more with the world. I'm being very negative so I'll say they did add some cool stuff. Caves were by far the best addition, and gave me a reason to comb through the map again in detail. The quests revolving around the post-office were a nice bit of world-building and by far the best quest chain in the game. My overall thoughts though are that TOTK lacked the wow factor and sense of adventure BOTW had for me. I know you can't repeat stuff like Eventide for the second time, but I was hoping for something new that catches me off guard like that. The game lacks the memorability of finding people like the crazy flower lady or locations like the Yiga hideout for the first time. Where are those unique encounters? Addison is fine I guess, but got very old after a while.
I haven't mentioned the depths and the sky yet because quite frankly they were major disappointments. I will give the depths credit for giving me that initial wow factor, but it loses its luster completely when you realize it's gimmick and the fact that there is nothing of interest down there outside two dungeon areas, which having unique theming and puzzles. The sky? Why is the most interesting part of it the tutorial? There's some neat islands like the one where the water level lowers or the place with there are perpetual lightning strikes; however, it needed so much more. I'm rambling now so my final point will be that the game double-downed on interactivity, but didn't meaningfully add new additions to other aspects that I felt needed more work. I'm not even going to get into dungeons, which fucking sucked, or how the the game just discounts the lore of the previous game to introduce a whole new backstory out of nowhere. In many ways, TOTK felt like a soft-reboot of BOTW rather than a sequel except this time you can just fly over the map and engage with it less meaningfully.
With Tears of the Kingdom, I initially thought it was a great decision to reuse the map because I love the idea of seeing a world I was familiar with evolve. I wanted to see a Hyrule that was in a rebuilding phase, and thought the team would be able to add a bunch of crazier things onto the map now that they don't have to create the geography from scratch. Well, that didn't end up happening... We got 1 new town. One. Hyrule Castle wasn't all that different, and acted once again as the final dungeon. Revisiting a lot of the other towns left me underwhelmed as well. Oh cool, Rito Village is completely covered in snow! I wonder what's going to happen after I clear the dungeon. Oh, it just returns to how it was in Breath of the Wild. Seriously? Why did they do that for so many locations? It's the same with Zora's Domain, Goron City, and Lurelin as well. I was so disappointed when the game built up the idea of Lurelin being taken over by pirates only for it to amount to a bunch of Bokoblins that I have to fight plus some busywork to get it back to the state that it was in the previous game. I think it's disappointing that these locations get less interesting the more you play. Kakariko's state of affairs is completely new, which is fine I guess, but that also extends to my point that there are no quests tied to the locations that are as interesting as in Breath of the Wild. I remembering arriving in Kakariko for the first time, and just spending an entire night meeting all the townspeople and doing quests for them. When it culminated in a shrine and a neat little resolution to all the events that led up to that moment, I felt greatly rewarded that I built a connection to the little village and it's people. Not here though.
I don't know man. I feel like they could have done so much more with the world. I'm being very negative so I'll say they did add some cool stuff. Caves were by far the best addition, and gave me a reason to comb through the map again in detail. The quests revolving around the post-office were a nice bit of world-building and by far the best quest chain in the game. My overall thoughts though are that TOTK lacked the wow factor and sense of adventure BOTW had for me. I know you can't repeat stuff like Eventide for the second time, but I was hoping for something new that catches me off guard like that. The game lacks the memorability of finding people like the crazy flower lady or locations like the Yiga hideout for the first time. Where are those unique encounters? Addison is fine I guess, but got very old after a while.
I haven't mentioned the depths and the sky yet because quite frankly they were major disappointments. I will give the depths credit for giving me that initial wow factor, but it loses its luster completely when you realize it's gimmick and the fact that there is nothing of interest down there outside two dungeon areas, which having unique theming and puzzles. The sky? Why is the most interesting part of it the tutorial? There's some neat islands like the one where the water level lowers or the place with there are perpetual lightning strikes; however, it needed so much more. I'm rambling now so my final point will be that the game double-downed on interactivity, but didn't meaningfully add new additions to other aspects that I felt needed more work. I'm not even going to get into dungeons, which fucking sucked, or how the the game just discounts the lore of the previous game to introduce a whole new backstory out of nowhere. In many ways, TOTK felt like a soft-reboot of BOTW rather than a sequel except this time you can just fly over the map and engage with it less meaningfully.
