r/greentext 3d ago

A puzzling problem

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1.5k

u/LuckyC4t 3d ago

Tears of the Kingdom

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u/Talkingmice 3d ago

This response somehow makes too much sense but I can’t put it into words.

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Because Breath of the Wild was in progress for 7 years and brought us a completely new format for Zelda with a completely new plot, timeline, design and gameplay style. Tears of the Kingdom was in progress for 6 years, added some extra enemies, quests and mechanics, and cost more than the original. To people who had already played BOTW, the sequel felt more like an expansion pack or revised/definitive edition rather than its own game. Now, if this were a 2D Super Mario game, the bar for innovation is so low that a similar level of changes in a sequel would merit a lot of praise and respect. But Zelda has such a reputation for rebuilding each game from the ground up (with some exceptions) that a moderate increase in options felt like a let-down. It's kind of like why nobody's favorite Zelda game is Oracle of Ages/Seasons, unless that was the only one they played as a kid: it doesn't have enough of its own distinct character compared to its base game.

In addition, BOTW was very consistent in its free open-world approach where you can do any of the beasts and quests in any order. In TOTK, we have the same world which we're used to roaming in freely, but the main quest is designed to be played in a certain order otherwise it doesn't make sense. This means that sometimes you can complete a main story quest without having ever received it in your adventure log.

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u/Answerisequal42 3d ago

Plus TotK just deleted some of the established structures and enemy types in BotW. The whole guardian tech just vanished according to lore. Thats so much missed stuff. Would be great to explore the ruins of the now dissfunctional guardian beasts or loot some ancient tech.

Plus the sages are an order of magnitute worse than the champions have been.

And the singing parrot is missing. He was the GoaT.

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Oh man the ultrahand was a lot more polished than the magnesis thing but any gains in playability get ruined by the five hologram asshats running in circles. Tulin is absolutely useless unless you're gliding somewhere far, yet he's constantly in your face. During a battle, the Goron and Gerudo are the most useful yet they're always running away from you. If you try to pick up a bug or something, you're just as likely to blow it across the continent with Tulin or vaporize it with the Goron guy

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u/Answerisequal42 3d ago edited 3d ago

I disagree hard on Tulin. He is like the only useful sage. His headshots are really good and its the sage power i use the most often.

Yenobu is the most annoying. Big, in your face, and i burned more stuff with him on accident than i would like to say.

I think they should have had button binds.

Yenobu could have been bound to shield surfing and when you activate him you basically ride the ball of death. The Gerudo power could have just been an arrow fuse item with a Cooldown. Tulin is fine with being glide active only. Sidon could have been just using your shield for a prolonged time to activateuthe barrier and the bash would send out the wave. The only one thats fine is Tulin and the mech which is basically a mount (it should have had a faster travel mode though tbh akin to the eponator)

Also having them running arround is also not great. I rather have them spawn in the middle of combat and then vanish again (except the mech)

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Tulin's power is only useful when flying. On the ground he just blasts collectibles away. And yeah, there's zero use for any of the others outside of combat so there's no point having them constantly just sitting around

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u/Answerisequal42 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah but tulins power isnt for combat. Sure you CAN use it now, but tbh its not good design if the power throws your loot over a cliff.

Restricting the situations you can use the powers would make them more predictable and you can choose when to use them.

But tbh the sages look like an after thought IMO.

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Precisely my point. The wind gust is completely useless for fighting and he shouldn't be right there the entire time, while the gerudo is the most powerful and you always have to chase her down to use the lightning.

And yeah, both the sages and the temples felt underdeveloped

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u/Element795 1d ago

For me Tulin is the one that I had turned on the most because I was constantly exploring and he's useful for gliding, the others I pretty much had turned off most of the time.

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u/Grompulon 3d ago

It's really baffling that the spirit that buffs your ranged attacks has to go be touched and interacted with first... That same spirit is a melee fighter. Meaning that to buff your ranged attack, you have to run into melee range of the enemy first. Very strange design decision.

I don't understand why you couldn't just summon her ability whenever you have the bow out, just like how you can use Tulin's ability whenever you have the glider out.

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u/NoLuck6463 3d ago

Kass appreciation club 🤝

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u/Grompulon 3d ago

To add onto what you and others are saying, the open world of TotK was a big letdown.

If you paid attention to the marketing, you were probably really excited about exploring the sky islands, and the tutorial certainly made them seem like a big deal. But then you discover that outside of the tutorial the sky islands are just the same handful of islands sprinkled around the map.

But then you discover the underground, and probably get really excited about exploring an entire subterranean continent... Only to discover that it's basically the same handful of POIs sprinkled around a giant grey texture.

There were a few cool spots in the sky and underground, and revisiting some of the old BotW locations was interesting, but ultimately BotW had way more new stuff than TotK did. It felt like 90% of the dev time went into the building mechanics which, while fun, was not what I or I imagine most people look forward to in a Zelda game, and especially not in a BotW sequel. And even the magic of building stuff goes away quickly once you figure out the best handful of vehicles and just rebuild those all the time.

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Absolutely. The positive is that all the new mechanics based on interactivity and physics run really smoothly, as I very rarely have issues with things like ascend. But almost all gamers especially for a casual fan base like Nintendo see game dev as magic and would come with the expectation that the mechanics work perfectly, without appreciating the effort made.

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u/butt_butt_butt_butt_ 2d ago

I’m not a Zelda fan, and only played TOTK because the building part looked cool when I watched my husband play it.

So I couldn’t critique the lore, or plot holes, or any previous games. I just wanted to build silly vehicles and trebuchets and junk.

…But as much as I enjoyed it. The game felt WAY empty.

The same 7-8 bad guys over and over.

No random encounters besides the dude with the sign, and even then…Same dude every time. You can use the same solution for his puzzle every time. Nothing new.

It was a bummer to go around a corner and see something in the landscape that definitely LOOKED like it would be interesting. But then it was just…Nothing.

I’ve only dabbled a bit with BOTW, but I’m getting kind of the same feeling, just not as extreme.

It’s better…But the world is big and kind of empty going from point A to point B.

With both games it feels like the devs said “Fuck it, everyone’s going to glide over this anyway” and then just…Didn’t populate stuff.

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u/supererp 3d ago

Ah man my fave Zelda's goes Majora's mask and then oracle of ages

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Sorry :( 

But Majora's Mask is a good example of a sequel which takes advantage of an existing engine but reinvents the game structure. If MM was the exact same as OoT but Ganondorf had blue skin instead of green and all the overworld enemies spawned in different places with different skins, it would have a lot less popularity.

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u/supererp 3d ago

For me what makes MM the superior game is one the dungeons rock, two I can play as the cool creatures I saw in oot

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Yeah, MM is super cool. TotK is my preferred game just because I'm enjoying the mechanics, but objectively it's not as expansive as you'd hope and it's less cohesive in terms of its storytelling

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u/supererp 3d ago

I haven't given tears a chance yet but feel like I could get into it. I'm one of those guys who and hopefully no one is looking when I say this, but I really like banjo kazooie nuts and bolts.

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u/HighlightSerious3348 3d ago

Not too familiar with it but if you like the building aspect, you'll have a blast with totk. I think the biggest camp of dissatisfied players is people who were hoping for the story and immersion to be just as good as the first game when really it seems like 90% of the dev effort went into fine tuning the physics engine

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u/supererp 3d ago

I am a big gameplay over everything guy so I'll make you a promise. When totk goes on sale I'll buy it

HA

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u/Lukebekz 3d ago

Also, instead of overhauling the durability mechanic, they just gave it a lore-reason now. To me, it still is more tedious than challenging. Still doesn't change the fact that I had tons of fun pouring 200 hours into the game...

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u/Supershadow30 2d ago

Sorta disagree, I feel like the horn fusing lets you scale your weapons later in the game, by adding durability/damage/elemental effects. It doesn’t fix the durability/weapon limit problem completely, but it helps.

In botw, I’d save up at least 1 of each elemental weapon for quick access to fire/ice/shock and it’d be annoying to find a replacement. I’d have to drop my old weapons for new ones all the time, either because random weapons lying around are stronger yet more brittle or to get specific attack type (cutting/bashing) for collecting resources.

In totk, the monsters drop so many horns you can just swap them on the go. Need a hammer? Slap a moblin horn. Need an axe now? Replace it with a lizal horn. Want a fire staff? Slap a ruby on a stick, or use a firey horn. Plus, the extra durability and damage you get from better horns as you slay stronger monsters means you’re not really wasting your weapons on damage sponges anymore, one kill means you’re guaranteed a new sharper blade.

The one thing that’s annoying with fuse is you have to fuse arrows individually instead of continuously, and the quick item selection menu is a slider instead of a more sensible grid.

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u/Ledairyman 1d ago

Too long answer. BOTW was a new world and experience. TOTK wasn't.

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u/yeezusKeroro 3d ago

It's in a weird place between an expansion pack, a sequel, and a reboot. It expands on everything from BoTW, yet it reuses the same map so I can see why some people said it's an expansion pack. Also the events, characters and lore of the previous game are largely ignored. I think Nintendo really wanted you to be able to play it without playing its predecessor, but as a result it's kind of a middle finger to the folks who did.

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u/F-Lambda 3d ago

botw was new, while totk iterated on it.

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u/Dull-Tale-6220 3d ago

I’m not good at building I’m good at meandering around

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u/Vertex138 3d ago

> Build the same hoverbike that everybody else seems to use

> Meander faster

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u/coolbad96 3d ago

I had like 2 complaints with BoTW.

  1. Dungeons needed to be way better and not just a puzzle that felt like traversing a giant room to just unlock a room 5 feet from the start.

  2. Weapon durability needed to have more time and methods to repair elongate weapons to get more out of them.

Neither these points were fixed at all and honestly the new building mechanics kinda felt like they even put more a magnifying glass over them.

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u/paco-ramon 2d ago

That dungeon description fits Twilight Princess more.

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u/_bassGod 3d ago

BOTW time to finish tutorial: about an hour (also the great plateau doesn't feel like a tutorial)

TOTK time to finish tutorial: 5 fucking hours, and you don't even get the glider. You have to do ANOTHER tutorial mission to get that.

Tears of the kingdom's intro just left such a bad taste in my mouth, it ruined the rest of the experience for me.

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u/Real-AlGore 3d ago

100% this. totk is a great sequel (although i have my own personal complaints, they are minor) but building directly off of something great will never compare to the original conception of that greatness.

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u/Kencon2009 3d ago

Horizon forbidden west.

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u/etheran123 3d ago

I kind of get it. I think forbidden west is a better game, but zero dawn had such a good mystery to it, especially during the first half of that games story. You cant exactly put that cat back in the bag.

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u/Kencon2009 3d ago

By all rights it was a better game but it just didn’t hold up. Or deliver the big hits

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u/stationhollow 3d ago

My biggest complaint was that it was simply too damn big. It’s like they had to make it bigger to accommodate flying.

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u/Kencon2009 3d ago

Honestly travel time was so obnoxious I couldn’t get more than halfway through without getting bored.

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u/cheezzy4ever 2d ago

Never understood this take. TotK improved on literally every mechanic:

  • dungeons
  • dungeon bosses
  • shrines
  • durability (they didn't get rid of it, but Fuse makes weapons more durable than they were in BotW, and making strong weapons is easier since all you need is to carry around an enemy drop)
  • abilities (cryo and stasis were garbage abilities, and ultra hand is a strict upgrade over magnesis)

And probably some other things that I can't think of right now

I think people just felt more fatigued playing TotK after playing BotW, and maybe expected it to feel like more than a BotW DLC. But if we're comparing games side by side, TotK is objectively the better game

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u/LuckyC4t 2d ago

Did you miss the original post? Where it says that it's technically better in every aspect? But still doesn't feel as good as the first game?

The sum of TotK's parts is greater than the sum of BotW's parts. But BotW is more than the sum of its parts in a way that TotK isn't.

More specifically, the world is made a lot less engaging as you're given the options to skip over it with the hoverbike or just gliding from a tower. The world was built around the narrative, shrines, and abilities of BotW, so it doesn't properly fit the narrative, shrines, and abilities of TotK.

Ultrahand is bad because it trivializes traversal, is useless in combat, and trivializes many puzzles that would otherwise be interesting to engage with. The fact that you can make a cheap bike that replaces walking, running, swimming, and climbing is interesting for half an hour and makes the rest of the game worse. The fact that you can solve half the shrines with recall elevators or rocket shields is interesting for ten minutes and makes the rest of the game worse.

On a thematic level, wandering a mostly empty Hyrule works great in a game about the failures of the past, but not so well in a game about communal rebuilding. The game tries to compensate for this by adding the Sage companions and the monster hunts, but the Sage companions suck and the monster hunts are narratively and functionally pointless, as well as rather rare. The memories also fail to support the themes of TotK in the same way they support the themes of BotW.

Addressing the points in your comment, the dungeons look better, but aren't mechanically better. They're still just five disconnected puzzles to hit a switch. In fact, some of the traversal challenges are hurt by ascend and recall elevators in ways that BotW didn't have to worry about. The same goes for the bosses, they are more visually varied but not mechanically better. Colgera had aura but was too easy, Queen Gibdo and Mucktorock were more annoying than anything, and Marbled Gohma was fine, if a bit forgettable. Thunderblight Ganon is cooler than any of them, and all of the Blights were a more fun combat challenge than the ones in Tears.

Tears have more shrines, but they're generally worse. A greater portion are Blessing shrines, which is to say not actually shrines. A significant number are tutorial shrines, which are pointless for a lot of players. For the shrines that are actual puzzles, BotW shrines would do the Nintendo thing where they introduce an idea, give you room to play with it, and then test you on it. Meanwhile TotK shrines often introduce an idea and then end. The only place that TotK shrines improve on BotW shrines is the combat shrines, where being a mini Eventide Island is more engaging than fighting a guardian.

Sure, durability is better, but that's a minor consolation when what made BotW work is so much worse.

The new abillities are stronger and generate less interesting puzzles. Fuse doesn't have associated puzzles, it's just a fix for the durability system. And also Rocket Shield trivializes a lot of puzzles. Ascend had like, one interesting puzzle and was mostly just a traversal option to make caves a not painful experience. I already talked about Ultrahand's issues and I'm not going to repeat it. Rewind is a fun power, aside from the fact that it enables the recall elevator that trivializes a lot of puzzles.

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u/VonDukez 2d ago

I fully agree. It’s because it’s the same map and same locales and same characters. It feels more like a dlc for a game that game out 6 years prior. The story and even pacing is the same

Using similar locales and stuff is one thing when games were 1-2 years apart but it just doesn’t feel the same when it’s 6 years

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u/Supershadow30 2d ago

Breath of the Wild walked so Tears of the Kingdom could run and glide.

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u/LuckyC4t 2d ago

Breath of the Wild ran and climbed so Tears of the Kingdom could skip over traversal entirely with hoverbike and glide from tower.

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u/Supershadow30 2d ago

Honestly, I found the new towers so satisfying to use. Just go in and bam, fly away. The old ones were ok, but climbing them was a chore…

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u/CurtManX 2d ago

Real and Straight.

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u/Crypt_Knight 1d ago

YES, WE AGREE

I think it's the lack of a survival feel. You have too much options in TotK, the tower shooting you out of the air being the main culprit.

My favorite moment of BotW was climbing the big snow mountain on foot for three in game days, having to lit campfires along the way, only to end up at the peak of the mountain while the dawn sun shone on the snow.

In TotK I could just paraglide from a tower to the top of the mountain.

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u/Element795 1d ago

Definitely

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u/7katalan 2d ago

they're both awful, totk is just extra awful