So I've had Tears of the Kingdom finished for a few weeks now and I've wanted to share my thoughts on it, because it's definitely the most conflicted I've ever felt on a videogame in a long time. So I guess I'm gonna ramble here for a bit (hooray, no character limits..!) and try and make sense of it all.
I'm gonna be spoiling some of the main content if you care about that sorta thing. Endgame spoilers are going in their own section tho
So on one hand the new content is pretty cool. I liked the Great Sky Island and honestly wish there was even more like it since the sky islands honestly feel pretty sparse outside of that. To massively summarise, I preferred it when TotK was doing its own thing - like with the GSO, or the depths, or the temples - rather than feeling more dependant on its predecessor. To be fair I wouldn't say there's much that feels "the same" as BotW, and I'm not about to ask for an entirely new game here, I'm sorta just saying how I feel. There were moments that had me in awe (like the leadup to the Wind Temple) because it felt like the game was sort of breaking free and BEING Tears of the Kingdom - not just "the sequel to Breath of the Wild." myouknowwhatImean?
In terms of the actual content that it presents, it's mostly pretty good... I like the new abilities Link gets here (Recall's a little busted though) and they make interacting with the world really fun. It's kind of a shame how a lot of the puzzles in the shrines and temples underwhelmed me a bit.. somehow the temples here felt even simpler than the Divine Beasts at times (besides MAYBE Lightning.) As for the shrines I can only think of a handful of TotK puzzle shrines that actually felt like they somewhat challenged me? A lot of them are just glorified tutorials for stuff I'd already figured out on my own. Friggin loved the Proving Grounds shrines though; while some are better than others, they're generally a really fun reimagining of the Eventide Island/Trial of the Sword quests, each revolving around a specific theme. Plus the battle music goes pretty hard
The UI's pretty sucky too... I feel like everyone's brought up the "throw material" UI at this point and yeah it's friggin abysmal. But in general I found myself getting a lot more confused with the controls than I did in the original. I get that they added a lot more features but I swear I legit couldn't actually tell you how to attach materials to your arrows despite doing so countless times. Also the way you have to drop your materials on the ground and THEN fuse them with your weapon is just plain bad. Like, to the point where I actively thought I was doing it wrong on my playthrough and there was a far quicker method that I'd missed, but from what I can tell there isn't. I do appreciate how you can drop stuff from your inventory if it's full when opening a chest though. Massively needed change lol. What if you wanted to get a cool bow but God said Your inventory is full.
I actually wanna talk about endgame stuff now so.. consider this your spoiler warning. Seriously I'm gonna talk about the endgame and the ending and the story n shit! Particularly the ending, I have a lot to say about it. So if you've played it through or literally don't care then continue I guess
Endgame spoilies
So weird thing about the Spirit Temple quest, right? I get what they were going for.. you get the four sages and then "find out" there's a fifth one too. And (as I later found out) you're supposed to take this whole route to Kakariko village, take a look at some old texts, learn that you need to go to Faron, walk around the Faron ruins, get the friggin armour pieces, and THEN and only THEN does the game open up the way to the Thunderhead Isles. You wanna know what I did? :)I got the regional map, saw the swirling thunderstorm on the map, thought it looked interesting, and sorta just... flew over there? This made the Thunderhead Isles almost impossible to see through, but I somehow brute-forced my way to the end where I STARTED the Spirit Temple questline and got my mind blown. Then I did all the stuff in the Depths, (the mech section honestly kinda sucks btw) did the boss, and assumed all that was just meant to be really elaborate optional content. So when I go back to Lookout Landing after all that, sort out the stuff in Hyrule Castle with a mech that cheeses the second phase, and just kind of awkwardly tell Purah "yeeaah like i kinda already did all that stuff i was gonna tell you i was just like waiting for you to finish so uh"
This isn't even a complaint really I just think it's really funny
What I AM gonna complain about is the ending. And only because I friggin love everything ELSE about it. The buildup to Ganondorf's fight was cool, Ganondorf himself was really fun (I really love how his healthbar just fills outside the normal boundaries just to scare you) and I love the final boss too. Great stuff. But here's the thing:
I did all the memories beforehand, right? Including the pretty impactful final one where Zelda decides to eat the friggin "secret stone" and she's like mmmm yum yum tastey. In a plot twist that I really, REALLY should've seen coming (all the stuff about turning into immortal dragons they established, the fact that they straight-up just added a fourth dragon called the LIGHT DRAGON where the MASTER SWORD is being kept, anyway.) So they have this drawn-out scene where Zelda's thinkin bout all the stuff she's been through up to this point and what she's about to do, because as they've established there's obviously no turning back from becoming an immortal dragon. And then we find out that the "tears of the kingdom" were LITERALLY her tears falling onto the kingdom and causing all the memories to exist in the present, and it's really cool.
So then when you team up with the Light Dragon to take down friggin Dragondorf it actually means something because I learned the story and know that Zelda's in there somewhere helping Link with this final showdown. And from here I'm not entirely sure what happens, but.. the ghosts of Rauru and Sonia show up and like.. use magic or something to turn the dragon back into Zelda..? And sure, I really like how the falling scene where you catch Zelda mirrors the very start of the game, but like.. I'm not the only one who thinks that's kinda lame, right? She falls into the lake and wakes up and she's just like "wow we did it!! we really did it!!! :D" and everything sorta just turns out fine. Doesn't that kinda take away from all that stuff about the sacrifice Zelda was making just to bring the Master Sword to Link? (which, I mean, you don't really need it anyway, but that's besides the point..)
And you might be thinking "doesn't Breath of the Wild do, like, the same thing?" And you'd be kinda right, but I personally think it's totally fine there. BotW's "story" past the plateau and Divine Beasts is basically just gradually learning how things were before the Calamity, and just how much was lost by the end of it. Like that one scene of Zelda just friggin breaking down crying after she loses pretty much everything. We actually see just how much Zelda went through across all these events, and then when we factor in that she's been sealing Ganon away for a goddamn century, not to mention all the champions and King Rhoam who are straight-up just dead and like. You don't need a downer ending there. "Saving" Zelda back there and defeating Ganon are like.. the two main things you accomplish there. They've still lost so much, Hyrule's in ruin, all their friends are dead, and yet they're both there in spite of it all to try and rebuild the kingdom.
But everything in TotK generally feels way more chill. From the start you know that Zelda's totally fine, despite not knowing how yet. So we go from "Zelda's totally fine" to "oh, she's a dragon now and will never be herself again" to "Zelda's totally fine again whew got worried for a sec there." I mean sure Rauru and Sonia die along the way due to Ganondorf but that's really about it.. the other sages besides Mineru have like no personality anyway so who cares.
(Sidenote it SUCKS how that series of scenes is literally just the exact same four times over but with the sage swapped out. It adds absolutely nothing and it's just tiring.)
So yeah I'm pretty much done here.. I ended up talking about the ending way more than I thought I would, (would you believe me if I said I was trying to be brief) but that's basically it. Overall TotK is a pretty good game that sadly just doesn't live up to the original for me. There's a few things I think could genuinely be improved and a few opinions I have as well.. I still enjoyed it overall though. If you're new to this sort of sandbox-like Zelda subseries I'd recommend starting with BotW.
also i never played age of calamity hahaha suckerrrs
