I beat Tears of the Kingdom last night and wanted to share a few thoughts (no spoilers)
I beat Tears of the Kingdom last night and wanted to share a few thoughts (no spoilers)
First of all, that final battle was a wild ride! One of the phases took me a minute to figure out, but it was so much fun, and really connected with some of the unique themes of this entry.
I didn’t get nearly as close to 100% as I did in BotW. In the first game, I did every shrine and all of the side quests, but there is just so much more content to this game. I worried that if I tried to complete everything before the final battle, the game would overstay its welcome, and I would finish with a feeling of “just get it over with.”
I’ve actually found that sentiment to be true with a lot of larger games recently. I want to end on a high emotional note, even if it means completing less side content.
I am on 121 shrines and have about 3/4 of the depths unexplored but I am really feeling the "just get it over with". Which is what I am planning to do now. It's just very sad because I enjoyed every second of BOTW and did all shrines and even did a bit of random exploring after just because I didn't want to leave the world yet.
Why do you think the sentiment is different?
I think it is a combination of multiple things.
The game is just too big for me. I have spent roughly the same amount of time on totk as I did on botw, but there is so much left to do.
Then, 2/5 of the world (the surface) is recycled which removes some of the joy of exploring, although I was pleasantly surprised by how different it was. Another 2/5 of the world (the depth) just aren't that appealing to me. What made me enjoy exploration in botw was constantly seeing something on the horizon that piqued my interest, which just doesn't work if the world is super dark.
Lastly, I am not really the creative type. I don't get much joy out of building cool stuff with ultrahand, and other than that the gameplay is largely unchanged from botw, which made it feel a bit stale. For example, I really think they should have overhauled the combat mechanics more. Even in botw combat felt rather simplistic, and after another 100 hours of the same it got really boring.
That’s how I feel with many open world games lately. That’s why I prefer games with less content that have me hooked for 20-40 hours instead of games that „potentially“ have 100+ hours of content
Same, yet here I am playing Diablo IV. That said, I guess it's not the same thing. I'm a bit wary of Starfield though, that thing looks massive! lol
The issue is that a lot of those games want to advertise with huge maps and long play time but they don't want to make more content, so they make a bigger map that is just empty and drag out the game with boring stuff like trailing missions. But as long as there are still games like totk that don't do that, I don't care. It's not like I have to play those boring games.
I get what you meant. That's how it felt for me too. I had the lingering fear that I would burnout from TotK before beating the final boss. I think it comes from playing video games my whole life. That feeling of excitement is not like it used to be if that makes sense.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I had the opposite experience with the final boss. I had around six hearts on the second row and the Hylian armor fully upgraded. I found the fight slow and unchallenging.
I also didn't even realize it was going to be the final boss. The mission was titled something like "Research ..." but we didn't actually learn anything about that.
I did think the cutscenes were good and the music during the rights and cutscenes was really good.
No, the final boss mission is titled "Destroy Ganondorf".
Yeah i think you found the boss on accident if that's the quest name you were seeing.
But so did I, so this can't be that uncommon. I question the design of having some mid-game content in the same (surface) place as the end-game because it becomes unclear what you're being pointed at. Put simply, tell me to walk towards the giant chasm; I'm jumping in.
I realized I wasn't supposed to be there yet when I recognized a typical pre-boss pattern that Zelda games use a lot. Trying to avoid spoilers there.
WTF. That would explain a lot. Now I'm wondering how much of the main story did I skip.
But that also makes that fight seem even more disappointing, to me, since i managed to easily beat it early.