#'it doesn't affect totk gameplay-' IT AFFECTS MY LIFE

[luvevee]

Tfw you load a new TOTK save and you realize you didn't finish the Champion's Ballad on that profile so now you either have to live with the empty space in your house or go back to do the entire mission

[tuliptiger]

Sorry but uhm TOTK kind of. The developers or leads made some bad choice all around. I'm sincerely tempted to just wait 2 more years for whatever DLC they're going to put out. Why expand horse stuff if you make them feel useless...because there isn't any way to get them to you.

They, for some reason, even got rid of the "horse can't hear you" prompt when you whistle but your horse can't "physically" get to you. There also isn't any horse teleporting saddle in sight...and I'm wondering if that was sincerely because they nuked almost everything sheika related.

Like. There is MORE stuff, there's more stuff all around the world. But it also feels emptier. I'm just so heartbroken and disappointed tbh. There's almost no new flora and fauna, the world itself hasn't been expanded upon or explored, seemingly at all. The story has been retconned and bastardized into something adjacent but not related.

Is the gameplay fun? Honestly I personally don't think so. The amount of stuff you could do and the key controls FOR all the stuff you could do in BOTW, to me, made sense and it was fun. It was manageable! I've been having a hard time remembering all the key mapping and what I can do and where in TOTK though, it's confusing for me for not a big payoff. 665 hours in BOTW and 45 in TOTK and I'm still not done, there is a LOT to do in TOTK but most of it doesn't hold a lot of substance.

I just. Man I would've made different choices I guess. More quality of life stuff, being able to buy or repair broken down areas (more than story related stuff like actually just buildings or towns or abandoned farms and stuff), filling the world with more flora and fauna. Having characters remember you for what you did in BOTW, having the story make sense, not nuking an entire civilization's achievements and also just the entire point of BOTW.

I miss my horse :( I miss how useful it was in BOTW. The machines are fine and dandy but honestly a sick ass loftwing or "living" animal companion beats the machines for me any day. The machines don't even last forever and have a weird time limit too so it's not even like you can freely fly around in the skys :((((( and they're so...clunky, the system is clunky.

Where is the personality!!! The affection and caring across the land for people and creatures and everything! I still stand by TOTK being uncanny valley of places you know but aren't right at all and it feels! Bad.

[autumn-foxfire]

I've had an absolute blast playing Tears of the Kingdom, really I have. I've spent the past couple of days in game just farming for materials and I haven't gotten bored. However I do have a big complaint with the game:

With the storyline it had, it should have been linear. Before people jump at my throat about how that would take away the charm and gameplay of TOTK, I know, but that doesn't mean I'm not aware how much the story suffered from it.

Spoilers going ahead!

Like in BOTW, Link is tasked with going to the four corners of Hyrule and meeting with the people both to help them with their issues and to find Zelda. This part of the game isn't the issue I have a problem as such with but it does lead to one that I do:

The Dragon Tears.

We're guided to go to Rito first (though that is very much a personal choice that not everyone followed) and the path to Rito you encounter a geoglyphs and Impa who is investigating them.

The Dragon Tears quest is basically a similar mechanic to the photos from the first game: they give Link a memory of Zelda, though in this case it's not Link's memories but Zelda's memories, specifically of her being in the past

Moving on from that now, as we explore each domain/city, we get in game hints with Zelda too: specifically with her being extremely suspicious and potentially causing harm to Hyrule. After completing each domain/city, they also learn that (and you if you had not done any of the geoglyths), Zelda appeared in the past.

This leads the characters in the game to wonder if the Zelda they have been seeing is the same Zelda as the person they see from the memories of the past.

So what is my issue with the The Dragon Tears? Well they reveal two pieces of important information that should affect how Link handles the domains/cities he hasn't gone too yet: One is that Ganondorf has created a puppet of Zelda before to do his bidding. Two is that Zelda makes a huge sacrifice that basically erases her as a person.

How is this an issue?

Well, Link never tells people he saw that Zelda made this sacrifice beyond Impa who was investigating the Geoglyphs and two he allows himself to fall into a trap in Hyrule castle with Zelda and the game acts like he fell for Ganon's puppet when he should know that it was a fake (as he knows that the Zelda he knew no longer exists).

I also have an issue with Link's reaction to Zelda's sacrifice (or really a lack of a strong one considering Zelda is supposed to be such an important person to him) but that's another issue.

It makes the game lose the shock factor it was trying to go for with the reveal. In fact, at that point of the game we should be asking ourselves "what happened to our Zelda" and then that's when I believe that the Dragon Tears should fall to Hyrule and create the Geoglyphs, instead of being available from the start.

Instead it just rolls over to "where is the 5th sage and maybe they can reveal what Link already knows at this point but isn't sharing for some reason!". Which you can actually get before you even get the other sages too so that makes the game lose some more of its draw and tension because again you might already know as Minaru hints at it (my brother did so).

BOTW worked so well because the game didn't require you to do a specific order to experience the game to it's best potential. Even with the memories, if you got them out of order, the purpose was to share Zelda and Link's past and character before the fall of Hyrule.

In TOTK, the memories are used to reveal what happened to Zelda in the past. It turns it into a mystery that you want to unveil however with the choose your own route you get in BOTW, it ruins some of the experience with the main quest because the mystery in those quests are already ruined if you do the Geoglyphs first.

It also makes you wonder why Link isn't telling anyone. These people are supposed to be his friends, people who he trusts his life with, who are helping him find Zelda. But he stays silent that he knows what happened even though they could put their heads together to see if they can reverse what happened to her? It just doesn't make sense and it definitely made me feel that Link didn't even really care. This plotline could have definitely been handled better in game to get the max engagement and enjoyment from the user. It's still a great game but I definitely have some major grieviences about it.