4d ago

Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a Masterpiece, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an Indulgence

I was a huge fan of Breath of the Wild when it came out and played the hell out of it. At a certain point, it felt like I hit the logical end point and there wasn't much else to do. When I started playing Tears of the Kingdom, I got exactly what I wanted which was more Breath of the Wild. I'm still playing ToTK and really enjoying it.

Tears of the Kingdom is more of a lot of things. The expansive world of BoTW was expanded even further upward to the sky and downward to the depths, the combat is better, the annoying mechanics are remedied, there is far more to experience, there are many more missions and things to collect, and there is far more customization and sophisticated use of the systems invented by Breath of the Wild. As I've been playing it (many more hours now than I played BoTW), I've been thinking about why I don't love it like I loved BoTW despite it me having more fun with it.

It's not uncommon to be disappointed by ToTK, and I've listened to many negative reviews. Oddly, I agree with most of what they say short of believing the game is bad or really failed in any way. I think ToTK is doing a different thing than BoTW. While ToTK fixed many mechanical issues from BoTW and added so much that BoTW might as well be obsolete from a gameplay perspective, ToTK completely lost the vibe that BoTW had which was that game's primary strength.

Breath of the Wild is mysterious, melancholy, and beautiful. It's a game about exploration in every way. Through the experience Link learns where he is, who he is, and the context of what is happening in real time with the player. The world feels especially dangerous because you start with literally nothing and you don't really know what's going on. The intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to the game are all to do with exploration. Seeing a century-old battlefield littered with the weapons of fallen soldiers amidst the ruins of a village totally reclaimed by nature is a particular kind of emotional experience, and there are many such experiences throughout the game. Unfortunately, there is only so much to discover and once the map is filled out, the cutscenes are seen, and Ganon is defeated, there isn't much to do after that but poke around the world for its own sake or test your patience with the annoyingly difficult DLC.

Tears of the Kingdom, a continuation of the story, is not so much focused on exploration. In ToTK, exploration is one of the many fun activities the player can do. The overworld is the same with some minor differences such as a network of caves, and the skyworld and underworld are filled with treasure and beauty but not much in the way of themes or emotional resonance. Far more so than in BoTW, the world of ToTK feels like the player's personal playground to experiment with and relax in. It's just not that serious.

Unlike in BoTW, it's easy to forget the main antagonist is even a problem in ToTK. The game is more interested in world building for its own sake. For example, the people of Kakariko village are far more concerned with local archaeology than the potential doom of the world. Most characters in the game are more concerned with their low-stakes slices of life than Ganondorf politely sitting in the castle and not threatening them at all. No one is in any real danger. Groups of villagers attack monster camps with ladles and pot lids and not one bad thing can ever happen to them. The tone from the previous game is obliterated, but it's fun, and I don't think this is a bad thing. I am ok with the focus shifting from discovering the world to greatly expand the capability to goof around in that same world.

I would say that BoTW is the meal and ToTK is the dessert. Many people were disappointed that ToTK wasn't another meal of the same quality as BoTW, but personally I'm ok with having dessert.

27 comments

Sacred stones? Imprisoning war???

For me I stopped playing because the switch is a horrifically uncomfortable console that can barely render the game at a playable frame rate, let alone a good one
Really should emulate it sometime
- I'm reading online that the game doesn't even maintain 30 FPS on the switch in docked mode. That's kind of crazy for a console game released in 2023. I get that it's a cheaper console, but at some point, they need to bite the bullet and just manufacture something with better hardware. No wonder people are trying their hardest to emulate the switch.
- if you're willing to try softmodding, you can comfortably overclock the switch to run tears at 60 in almost every situation.
- Emulate it on deck, I heard it does great there.
  
  Not really. At best you'll get the same framerate than the Switch.
- Works well in emulator
  Did stop playing cause I was bored of the repetition and the unskippable cutscenes. Aka I don't actually enjoy Nintendo games.

Lack of free cloud saves is a non-starter. Why spend hundreds of hours on a save that can be gone at a moment's notice?
- Same reason anyone has played any of the thousands of games that predate "the cloud" or games that don't even have a save feature. Cloud saves? No thanks, never have, maybe never will.
  Besides, if you're not paying for the service, you're the product not the consumer.
  
  Back in my day, you didn't even have game saves. You beat Mario 3 in one sitting or you started over, and we liked it!
- Because those hundreds of hours are spent enjoying yourself.

I thought both games were excellent, but yes there was definitely something about BOTW that set it apart. In addition to what you've said, I think it's partially that BOTW was such a unique experience the first time through - little things like the stamina meter for climbing, the cooking to help you craft items that warm you up etc. Discovering these features and setting off in whichever direction you fancied was a joy. TOTK didn't have this same joy, as I already knew about these mechanics. And it felt like there was much more of a push to get the player to go in a specific direction, rather than leaving the exploration up to them.
I reckon they probably did the best job they could've with a sequel, but it was never going to be possible to live up to BOTW.

I enjoyed BotW, but I knew from the moment I saw the "let's go Lego!" mechanics in TotK that I probably wouldn't enjoy it at all.
Just really don't like building mechanics in games. Or crafting. And the crafting was already pushing it in BotW. This is just amped up to eleven.
- Just really don't like building mechanics in games. Or crafting.
  High five brother.
  Even with that I am about to finish BOTW, I am not too excited about TOTK though.
  To be honest even when BOTW has crafting mechanics I barely use them... I don't cook anything unless a mission requires it, the same for the weapons I don't craft them, I just pick up whatever, it is not like they last too much.

This meshes pretty well with my feelings of thing. On the whole, TotK is more refined more of the same. I've enjoyed seeing how the world and characters have moved on, I enjoyed the side quests, and I enjoyed that feeling early on of the depths being new, mysterious, and dangerous.
One of the things I decided early on was that I didn't like the Lego Technic stuff, and I committed to using it as little as possible. Especially for speeding up travel. I'm an old, and my internal Hyrule is deeply and strictly... medieval? Mythical? Legendary? Electric drones just don't fit into my schema for Zelda, even though the developers gave been slipping more and more magitech into the setting for going on 20 years now. I feel that this has given me more of a sense of the game as a meal, to use your analogy, but it's definitely an indulgent one.
I wasn't looking for more BotW. I was just looking for more Link, Zelda, and Ganon. I got what I wanted, and I genuinely don't understand the ire the game has drawn, other than, maybe, a lot of people getting what they wanted, discovering they were wrong about what they wanted, and being unwilling to accept that.

Interesting, for me TotK felt vastly superior to BotW. I played a lot-ish of BotW but after I was done with the story, I pretty much dropped it. TotK I obsessed over for weeks. The story made me so emotional and immersed at points that I count the whole experience amongst my top five for gaming.

I personally found the new Zelda games to be empty feeling, characters felt bland. Overly annoying combat system where you weapons are constantly breaking, puzzles were ok. Just felt like a massive chore to even like this game. I'd much rather play link to be past again then this new stuff but that's my opinion.
I just can't enjoy my time playing it.

I didn't care much for botw. I still cleared it and had fun. It's just the item durability system frustrated me. Everything felt cheap and not rewarding as a result.
- durability systems in non crafting games suck all of the joy out for me. I get weirdly anxious about "optimizing" my weapons and end up only using bad weapons and making the game needlessly hard on myself.

Definitely agree! I barely played TotK because, aside from the flying stuff together aspect, I’d already done everything I wanted in BotW. I did my exploring, my climbing, my juggling weapons during combat. I’ve done had more than my fill of those dinkly little shrines.
BotW is better imo because of what it was: new and surprising. TotK was good but (aside from some gimmicks that made driving around a bit more creative and streamlined) more of the same.
Anyway thanks for sharing!
- This is very interesting to me because I wanted to keep going after BoTW ended. ToTK is like a full game sized DLC with all new gameplay elements, so it was exactly what I wanted. It's kind of like an indulgent victory lap showing off all the cool stuff the engine can do with some new tools to play with. I will say that this is enough for me. Really hoping they do something completely original again.

I played both and found Botw boring. Huge areas were nothing was happening, but they looked nice. Except the divine beasts, they were boring as hell, gameplay wise and optical. For this they got rid of cool dungeons? The challenge shrines repeated often and were not really interesting at all. And the weapons broke permanently. After a short while I simply rushed through this game. I can see the love poured into this game but the gameplay was just soon boring to me.
Then came Totk. I was sceptical at first, but then came the building of stuff. Suddenly it was okay when weapons broke, because you could try other interesting things with them. Dungeons were back. The challenge shrine were mostly puzzles for the build mechanic. The whole freaking world was filled with build puzzles where I could get lost in shenanigans. So they basically addressed most issues I had with the first game and as a result I liked it more.
Storywise I would place them both in the category "about okay".

I dropped BotW because of the weird Beast missions, for which I had to use an online guide to beat. I didn’t think the puzzles in them were well-designed at all.
TotK was the first Zelda I actually played to the end credits. It wasn’t perfect, but it was much more fun and better designed—aside from the depths and caves, which were way too monotonous.
But I do get the point about differing atmospheres. I loved what BotW offered, while TotK is at best an echo of it.
- What is a “beast mission”?
  Edit: The divine beasts. The mission bit totally threw me.

Breath of the Wild: Beautiful. Mysterious. Inspired.
Tears of the Kingdom. Big. Shallow. Boring.
I found the first dozen or two hours of TotK exciting, as I encountered new mechanics and a darker side of Hyrule. But it wasn't long before the new and exciting became endless expanses of copy/paste encounters and terrain, forgettable characters, and annoying enemies. Nothing felt clever or interesting. I lost interest in exploring, and wandered away from the game.
Then I went back to the first game for another run.

I loved botw, I wished so bad for totk to happen, it happened, I got it, then I realized I didn't really want totk. It's a weird feeling.

27 comments