So I “finished” The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Lets face it, with all the stuff you can do in this game, you basically just reach a point where you have to decide when its time to call it quits and go and do the final boss. I did all the main quests, beat 72 of the 152 shrines, and only half the side quests which actually shocked me when I found that out, considering by that point I had assumed I had at least found most of them. Its a big game, and I’m sure for some, engrossing enough to sink all that time into to find out its greatest secrets. For me though, I’ve had enough, and plan to go online to see the stuff I’ve missed.
Did I enjoy it? Yes, I did, and I did enjoy this more than Breath of the Wild, probably because I had a lot clearer idea of what I was meant to doing. I think my death count is probably like a third or even a quarter of what it was in BotW. It probably helps that this game’s tutorial is alot less gut punching than BotW’s, and once you’ve done the tutorial, you get a central hub to operate out of in the center of the map this time, rather than in BotW where your basically sent out on your own devices and need to decide the direction to take. Not to mention, with so much emphasis on the sky now, the Ubisoft towers are gone and replaced with towers that launch you into the air, which is both fun but also makes traversal quite a bit easier, especially once you start getting your stamina increased.
Otherwise, you know, its everything BotW was really with various tweaks here and there. I get annoyed alot in the early game because I’m so frail, and feel like I often have to avoid fights since I have so little gear and have to avoid damaging it. I think that is something I really dislike, and wish you could aquire gear that didn’t break, or some kind of repair mechanic. I don’t like avoiding fights or doing a fight, losing equipment in the fight, and then feel like I achieved less than what I lost since monsters only award equipment, monster parts, and food on death, no money or XP since this game doesn’t use an experience. I think that is something that does bother me is the lack of some kind of experience system in general. OK, fine, it’s probably a bit much to ask for any kind of skill tree or what have you, but I dislike the Shrine system for being the only way (outside of achieveing certain main missions) to aquire hearts and stamina extensions. It just feels disconnected from the rest of the game, and in the early game I feel I’m running around trying to find as many shrines and towers as possible just so I don’t get constantly one shotted by most monsters and I don’t find that very fun. I guess I prefer the far more traditational gameplay loop of defeating enemies eventually makes me stronger directly, rather than the shrine method. I don’t “get” shrines really. I like the “Proving Grounds” which are combat trials, they’re fun, but the rest? I don’t get the love of them. They tend to be so bite sized that I tend to forget them as soon as I’ve completed them, and it just gets frustrating when you get stuck on one, especially when it requires some physics. Maybe I’m the problem here, but I just wind up feeling like if I want to play puzzles, I’d play an actual puzzle game. Not to play The Witcher 3 and then take breaks to do puzzles from Portal. I also wish enemies dropped money, it can be surprisingly difficult to get cash in the early game, but you learn eventually that this stops being an issue. I mean, I’ll give it this, this is one of the few RPGs or games in general where the economy is broked by the second half of the game, you can’t grind your way out of this.
As for story, well… full spoilers:
This is basically Breath of the Wild but again right? The threat of Ganon happening in the distant past with a distant civilization, the Sages being this game’s Champions, Zelda effectively being out of the picture until Link saves her at the end, the Rito, Goron, Gerudo, and the fish people all having problems in their specific regions that Link needs to sort out. I like elements of this, it’s nice that the Zelda timeline is doing some real world building here with Zonai and the birth of Hyrule. I will admit as well, the cutscene where Zelda turns into a dragon, and that realisation of where she has been this whole time, that genuinely choked me. Not to mention the very ending with the fantastic score as you sky dive after Zelda.
I guess I just wish the game was a bit more willing to flesh out concepts. Ganon is just a very generic bad guy to me, even if I love his zombie form, and that opening cutscene of mocking the Master Sword. Just gets a bit silly to me when he sprouts about how much he loves power, but his only plan seems to just be about spawning monsters and killing everybody else? Also, wish him being a Gerudo had some sort of impact, I mean what about the Sage who went against him? Did she have to betray her people in the process by doing that? What about the Zonai, I guess there are some teases hear of their connection to the Gods but I wish that was a bit more fleshed out. I would hope the Zonai get a role in the future, they’re cool. Otherwise, fairly standard stuff. I like how optimistic the game is about all of Hyrule trying to rebuild and combat a threat.
Still, a great time altogether, although I certainly wouldn’t play Tears and Breath close to each other, definetly space the 2 games out unless you truly are fanatical about it.
Finally started Code Rain, enjoying it so far. You know you’re in for a meaty adventure when it takes over 4 hours to finish the game’s tutorial and prologue and then the game’s intro cinematic plays.
