basically gonna crosspost over from twitter to summarize my thoughts but i finished Tears of the Kingdom after work last night and thought it was Pretty Good...but I liked Breath of the Wild on the whole more?
Much better major dungeons and main power set (esp ultra hand and fusion for weapons) but the rest i think was probably done better in BOTW to me. it seems like the dev team got caught up in Sequel Feature Creep, in that its trying to do too much in order to seem like a bigger, improved follow-up. the depths are a cool addition, as are the sky islands and the verticality in general, but in conjunction it does make the game feel incredibly Bloated.
still not a fan of the emphasis on shrines and the somewhat unwieldy combat mechanics, and the story does Nothing For Me (and actively detracts from the good parts by the end, on top of being Really Weird About Ganondorf Again) but i think exploring feels as good and rewarding as ever, as did its predecessor.
there's too many new currencies though, christ. why's there like 6 of them to juggle.
If open world Zelda is here to stay for the newer, mainline titles, I hope the next one is a relative shakeup from its predecessors at least.
