blog/content/post/totk.org

#+title: "My thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom"
#+date: 2023-09-01T16:39:47+02:00
#+draft: false
#+categories[]: Games
#+tags[]: Zelda TotK BotW Games Switch Nintendo

Hello again, been a while hasn't it?
You know, existing can sometimes be just enough.
During the summer, I started a playthrough of the new Zelda game and it leaves me with opinions.
I thought I would write about it to explain my opinions on the game and fully understand what I even think.
So let's get into it, shall we?

* Me and other Zelda games
When I was a kid, I was introduced to Zelda by my uncles, playing Wind Waker, Link's awakening and later Twilight Princess.
It got me hooked on the games, the exploring was a great and going through dungeons.
I would go on to play most of the main line Zeldas and they offer different experiences but all offered something that I enjoyed.
The scope of Ocarina of time, the creepy nature of Majora's Mask, the plot of Skyward sword, it was all so much fun.

** Then Breath of the Wild came out
I experienced it later than most people, other than the one time I got to try to speedrun it at a friends house.
The scale of it, and the fact that it had so many points of interest available to one just walking through the world.
I enjoyed it a lot.

*** The tools available
There were complaints about the weapons breaking but I felt, with the addition of the bombs and other tools, was a puzzle to solve.
You could always traverse the world without using one of the powers.
Sure, they could make it easier, as seen in speedrunning with bomb jumps or stasis hits.
When approached with a mountain range one could climb it, sometimes with more difficulty than others.
Take the waterfalls of the Zora domain,
one could use the ice blocks on the side of the waterfalls to climb,
but you could also use the Zora armour or take a different route by climbing.

*** The dungeons and repetition
The dungeons in the game were hype approaching them.
They were big, causing issues for the inhabitants of the world.
But when actually doing the dungeon, it was a an exploration to get to some switches to then defeat an unrelated boss that felt that it didn't have a build up.
It felt like a let down.
When actually facing Ganon though, it did hold up since they had set him up with a castle to either sneak or battle your way through.

*** The story and it's presentation
The base contents of the story in BotW is well presented and you immediately understand what happens.
Zelda, Link and the other heroes were overpowered, so Link was sent to regenerate while Zelda held up the fortress.
You wake up in a different world, where it seems that Ganon more or less has won, and you have to return to save Hyrule.
But to get more information, you have to find points that you can see in pictures.
These pictures have the issue of being in specific locations that are easy to miss for an adventurer.

* Here comes Tears of the Kingdom
So I got to borrow my friends old switch to play Tears of the Kingdom.
I bought the game myself, and a new pro controller to get to play it.
I started it and had mixed feelings quickly.
Hearing Fi from the sword did have me in tears when it broke though.

** The toolbox
What made feel bad was how things, like the powers were introduced and how some of them seemed necessary for progressing on the platform.
Coming from Breath of the Wild, this felt very strange.
You had to build boats with a ultrahand,
that when using pro controls (as I did since I dislike the clutter that it shows on the screen),
doesn't tell you how to deconstruct things if you mess up.
Ascend is built in the same way,
but instead of you constructing the solution (which there might be different ways, but all include ultrahand),
the world is designed to use ascend.

The teleport system also affects how you traverse the world, since the world is almost 2/3 times the size.
There are specific points of interest that allow you to travel from the overworld to the sky or the underdark,
which means that you have to be able to get to them in an easier way.
The teleport makes this so much easier.
But this makes the simple walking around and finding something interesting feel like a waste.

Fuse, fuse, fuse.
This ability makes me dislike the combat so much.
Instead of finding interesting weapons out in the world,
you have to fight enemies to then convert your weapons into something new.
You can't ensure that the weapons will work as it was intended,
since you will want to deal the most damage.
Then a sword can become more like an axe due to the nail you fused.
And the normal weapons,
that are simple to understand,
are almost unusable due to breakage being ramped up.
I ended up just using the bow,
since that will work as one would expect no matter what,
and adding bombs to specific arrows rather than gathering bomb arrows is a change that I approve of.

** The dungeons
The dungeons have a similar problem with the switches.
You arrive at a dungeon, and need to hit a button that depends on a switch of some form.
But the boss is actually setup.
It is them that is shown to affect the areas.
Queen Gibdo is making the storm, Colgera is making the snow storm, and Mucktorok is slinging out the sludge (I have yet to get to death mountain).
So the reward does feel related to what you are working for when helping these areas out.

I am doing TotK a bit of a disservice here though, with how the switches are made.
They are more interesting,
since they aren't all based on moving an area with the use of the map,
but they are in large part the same concept.

** The story
In TotK, the story starts in a much clearer way, and introduces this old civilization.
Zelda has been transported through time.
It feels way more in depth compared to BotW.
It does however conflict a bit with other games in my mind,
in particular with Skyward Sword,
but that is something that doesn't really matter when it comes Zelda.
The way to get more information is by talking to the different factions, and finding the tears.
The tears are the same idea of the pictures from BotW,
but implemented way better,
since you can see theme way easier.
The issue that was raised to me by a friend,
was that the world doesn't react to you gaining more information about what has happened if you don't do it in the correct order.
If you finish the tears before dungeons,
it gets a bit messed up.
Also, if you decide to go to another region than Rito in the beginning, you won't get the foundations of the tears explained either.
So TotK fails a bit in their ability to explain the story due to them not wanting to limit how you navigate the world.

* What does this mean?
I think that some of the ideas that Tears of the Kingdom introduces creates an interesting game,
but it bases a lot of what was created in Breath of the Wild and suffers therefore.
A game that either focuses a lot on the story or the exploration is what I think I want from a game.
And I am not saying you can't have both, but it will need to make sure that either aspect doesn't infringe on the other.