#listen no one is doing it like botw. and if totk also won goty I feel like that would diminish botw's cultural impact

[cryiling]

in honor of totk NOT winning goty 🫡 here is my notes app from when totk first came out and I wrote all my thoughts abt the game down

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today totk got released!! and I played for 8 hours straight 😭 I'm not suuper far in the game yet, I sort of just started the rito quest with tulin, but here are some things I love and dislike about the game so far:

first of all I love the archaic outfit 😊 however I'm very sad that it only does 1 protection because I wanted to wear it all the time AJDBAJDB

I love everything about the zonai, like the way they look, the music associated with them, the way they talk at the end of a shrine, the way you can tell something is of zonai make just by looking at it, like that's how you know a concept design is well done ✋ I'm so fascinated by how rauru looks, he's just so amazing

I do hate how extremely similar aspects of the great sky island are to the great plateau, though. "room of awakening" bro r u serious rn 😭 the way rauru follows you around like the king good bye. I just feel like this could have been done a little more uniquely so that it didn't feel like the great plateau with a texture pack slapped over it

there's also some things that I felt botw just did so much better than totk. like the way rauru's ghost would disappear felt very cheap and uneventful, like why does he just fade to 0 opacity and nothing else happens ?? at least with the king his ghost faded with the little blue flames and sparkles, it made it seem more interesting

I hate the inventory layout I'm sawryy 😭 the botw inventory looks very sleek and easy to comprehend, but the way the totk inventory is designed just feels very cheap and elementary to me. not the scrolling on one page instead of having multiple pages, that's not my issue. just the color design and how so much more information is crowded into each tiny box when you are selling things, it just confuses the player with too much info

uhh what else. oh! I also hate the animation for when you get the abilities at the beginning, and when you get those lights of blessing or whatever (honestly I hate that name too, why is it so long I literally can't remember it 😭). like why do the orbs with the abilities and blessings look so 2d and unfinished? they look like they were slapped on top as a fanmade effect rather than actually being a part of the game, and every time I see it, I feel removed from being immersed in the games because it's distracting

but I totally love the way the zonai statues are at the end of the shrines!!! the way they talk is SO 🙏🙏 like I'm totally obsessed with it. also!! this is very specific, but I love the music that plays during shrine battles, like why does that song go so hard fr

omg something else I love is the pony points system it's so cute 😭✋ and honestly it's a great incentive for me to use the stables, I don't think I used them that much in botw so I definitely appreciate this new addition

AND MY HORSES ARE HERE TOO IM SO HAPPY 🥺🥺

however I am devastated that we can't pet dogs ☹️ like was no one at nintendo listening to us when we were all asking abt it hello ??

this is more of a personal preference rather than a game quality thing but I AM SO HAPPY THERE'S PIRATES IN THIS GAME AAAAAAA i can't wait to go to lurelin village I rlly hope they let me join the pirates 🙏 (hi it's me from the future here, girl wtf why are the pirates literally just MONSTERS ON BOATS 🙁 give me real fucking pirates you cowards)

omg yeah I was obsessed with the frozen rito village ost, it had the core elements of the ost from botw but with that lonely haunted vibe and I was gonna cry omg it really set the mood and I loved listening to it 😭

ohh yeah something I didn't enjoy was how it felt like I was being overloaded with so much plot-heavy info, especially once I started the rito village quest. like yeah I get maybe playing for 8 hours in one day is probably gonna fry my brain and attention span but it just felt like they were telling me to do all these things and I just felt so overwhelmed that I literally had to put the game away and stop playing for the night 😭 I think if things were spaced out more for what they tell you then the plot might have been more digestible

oh yeah this is minor but I don't like how when you go to a new place it says "discovery!" and also when you cook a new food it says "new!" like it felt very commercial and broke the immersion in the game for me, there was literally no reason for it to be in the game? (upon playing the game further I've decided I don't mind the "discovery" notif. but I still don't like when it says "new!" on a food I cooked sorryyy)

OMG WAIT SOMETHING I LOVED was how link cycles through humming different things when he cooks!!! it's so cute and I love him for it 😭

also I loved the function of when you open a chest and get a weapon but your inventory is full, instead of having to close the chest drop a weapon and reopen the chest, they added the feature where your inventory pops up and you can drop a weapon while still in the chest so you don't have to switch back and forth. it was so relieving for me ✋

umm I definitely feel like there was more I wanted to say, I just forgot 😭 but let me just say, despite me having a lot of negatives on here, I still really enjoyed this game, and honestly aside from the things I mentioned I disliked, I love pretty much everything else about the game!! there's so much to love and appreciate, I really can't list it all or else I'd just be listing literally every aspect about this game ajdhskfj. so yeah. while I'm disappointed that I found parts of totk to be lesser than what I had hoped, I am still overall ecstatic about this game and I'm so excited to see what else I'll discover in this game!!!! (hey it's me as of writing this post, I definitely wrote this last paragraph to avoid getting bullied for not liking a lot of things LOLL)

hey I'm back (not as of writing this post, like a couple months after initially starting totk), listen ok I hate these stupid sage powers like 💀 they're literally not useful at all, I think tulin's is the only one I use regularly, and even then I'd rather have revali's gale bc at least it goes up ??

I've been watching other ppl play and I realize that actually yunobo and riju can kinda be useful when fighting large groups, like if you just activate yunobi's ability you don't really need to aim him, and he'll hit a bunch of monsters. same with riju, just activate her and shoot somewhere random and it'll do damage. but other than that, like sidon and mineru are useless 😭 also I get rlly annoyed when I'm trying to pick things up and tulin gets in the way like GIRL GO AWAY ugh it would just be so much better if the abilities were activated like the champions instead idk

ok I'm obsessed with the way rauru's ear twitches LOLL THAT'S SO RANDOM but in the memories it's just so satisfying to see

hm idk how to explain this but there's some aspects of this game that feel very aoc to me and it annoys me. like, the defend kara kara bazaar + gerudo village quests, and that one thing in hateno with the stupid pumpkins, idk but it totally threw me off guard with having to fight with npcs, like it felt very jarring to have in the middle of totk. i never liked aoc or any hyrule warriors games so that's probably why I don't like this very much, but yeah I just didn't enjoy it very much

god I can't describe how much I hate everything abt mineru I'm sorry I just hate her bc like,, bro I hate to say it but I never connected with her character at all. every part of her in the storyline felt forced, and her connection to zelda and the sages never felt authentic. also I hate the eng voice acting like why does she talk like that 😭

her talking about draconification felt sooo forced. she said "there are stories of eating the stone to turn into an immortal dragon" like that could be a solution, then when rauru asked if they could do that, she was like "however 🤓☝️ you'll lose your sense of self and it's forbidden. I thought this would give us an answer but maybe not 😞" like BITCH IF YOU KNEW IT WAS FORBIDDEN WHY WOULD YOU SAY ANYTHING 😭😭 the way she said it, it sounded like she was reading a book and learning this information as they went, which would make sense why she brought it up but turns out it won't work. BUT SHE KNEW THE FULL THING ALREADY WHY DID SHE SAY IT LIKE THAT???? god it annoyed me so much, it was such a bad foreshadowing plot point

and honestly her entire quest confused me, bc the whole first part has a very thunder/lightning theme so I thought her power would be related to that but it wasn't at all? like how come we didn't do anything spirit related meanwhile all the other sages had areas that related to their powers, ugh it felt so dumb. lightning is already heavily associated with riju + the gerudo, so it felt weird that they themed the whole first half of mineru's quest around it too.

I hate her stupid construct. IT'S SO LAME 😭 has anyone actually enjoyed fighting with it. has it actually benefitted anyone. like be so fr rn. I hated it so much that I built a freaking airbike and just flew to the final temple without fighting any of the stuff along the way bc I refuse to be forced to do things I don't like 🫶

and then at the end of the game when her spirit leaves her construct and she dies or whatever, I was just like 😐 they tried to make it emotional but literally mineru is my worst enemy and I was cheering and applauding atp. like I could care less. her character felt, idk how to describe it, like.. cringy and self-inserty? something about it felt very off to me and so I was just never able to like her. it felt like nintendo was trying to force me to like her and I was Not about to let that happen

hang on I have other things to complain about... oh yeah the STABLE TROTTER CONDUCTOR LIKE BRO 😭😭😭 why does he sound like mario, like I actually want to punch him in the face. the rest of the band is fine tho, I like their music 🤞

hm something I'm annoyed about is how much harder it is to find the dragons now. in botw their flight pattern was more predictable, but here like istg I can never find them when I need them 😭 it's just vv inconvenient

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ok I'm back back. I think that about covered all my thoughts BUT one more thing. the map is so fucking cluttered. something that was done so well with botw was the openness of everything, it really fit the vibes and it immersed you in the expanse of the game. but the totk map was WAYY too busy 😭😭 not only with the purah pad map (which btw I still think sheikah slate is a better name) but just in general when you're walking around hyrule. there is Too Much going on and I don't like it

LAST THING although tbh this could be a whole separate rant. the way the purah pad is compatible with zonai technology makes no fucking sense???? like there is NO logical explanation for how it can mark waypoints at zonai shrines

in botw it made sense, because the shrines were sheikah-made and so was the slate, so ofc the sheikah would have built them to be compatible and programmable with one another. but the zonai shrines??? first of all they're just rocks on sand. no sort of technology the purah pad can latch onto. second, you activate the shrine with the ZONAI ARM, not the purah pad. literally no connection is made. this is such a small thing to fixate on but every time I think about it I am filled with inexplicable rage

I have a whole OTHER rant on why the sheikah tech disappearing makes literally No Sense but. this post is long enough as it is. if u want I can make a separate post but I think this is good enough for now 🤗