So this is just my stream of consciousness as I've been going through the game. It probably sounds overly negative for a game that's so good but just like with BotW, I went in expecting one thing and got something very different so my head is now having to digest the gap between what I wanted and what I got. Sorry.
I went into the game expecting The Sky to be the thing I'd want to explore and spend time in but the sky islands are so small and scattered that they barely caught my interest in the long run. The Great Sky Island was amazing and I figured there'd be a lot more like that and there just wasn't. I did, however, stumble across something where I actually experienced the BotW-like feeling of exploration and discovery again: The Depths.
What an absolute surprise that was! I got totally sucked into trying to explore them and fill out the map, especially once I realized the Lightroots correspond to Shrines. A lot of them are easier to track down than the shrines, since they're big and somewhat illuminated and everything else is pitch black. I started working to track them down as a means of finding shrines I couldn't see as easily. Also The Depths remind me of a cross between Noctilum and Sylvalum so the Xenoblade X fan in me was
very happy. Now I know why Monolith was so heavily involved with a game that "reused" BotW's Hyrule.
Actually now that I think about it, filling the map out with Lightroots gradually as you go along has a very MonolithSoft feel, at least compared to the towers. I wonder if that was their idea.
Being able to shoot up into the sky either via Recall or the towers really breaks the traversal imo. I found myself basically paragliding everywhere and missing most of the terrain, so it doesn't feel quite like the "revisiting of Hyrule" that I expected because I'm just skipping over most of it. I just sorta miss the wonder of walking/riding into an area and scoping it all out, because I descend into everyplace from the sky now. Often accidentally. Like I literally accidentally fell into Kakariko this time around, rather than BotW's build-up of the horse ride up the hills and through the canyon into the village. And I know that's sorta my own doing but like, if I have to make a decision to dial back my interaction with a core part of the game in order to feel like I'm fully experiencing said game then that's a little weird.
I eventually got the hang of Fuse and had fun with it, and it gives me a lot of incentive to go into mobs with black and silver enemies just to get good weapon-crafting stuff. But Ultrahand crafting never really stopped feeling like a chore and almost ruined one of the dungeons for me. Which sucks because the return of dungeons was something I was really, really excited about!! But these still aren't traditional Zelda dungeons, they're basically Divine Beasts that don't move. Go to the place, there's like five important rooms, find a way into them and push their buttons (here we'll mark them on the map for good measure) and there ya go. Just like the Divine Beasts. Which were cool in the concept of BotW, don't get me wrong! I enjoyed them, especially the scale and the way they really felt like they were in Hyrule as opposed to a sectioned-off separate area. I'm okay with them doing a similar thing here but I just got so hyped thinking "dungeons" would progress more like OoT through SS dungeons and that's just not what I got at all. I wonder if we'll ever even see those types of Zelda dungeons again at this rate.
Though I will admit I enjoyed the Lightning and Water Temples quite a bit.
Side note: when I dropped into the Depths for the Fire Temple quest it was an area I had actually explored the hell out of days prior, activating all the Lightroots in the area and everything. Yet I somehow never actually stumbled across the temple itself. I don't know how I managed to miss it.
The story is compelling in its own bubble but good
lord, them leading with The Imprisoning War namedrop made me feel like this was gonna connect more definitively with the lore, but then the monkey paw curled and then they seemingly retcon the shit outta everything instead, including The Imprisoning War itself! It feels like it's trying to retcon Skyward Sword a bit, but
maybe they aren't. I can accept that maybe post-Skyward Sword the Hylians are on the surface but haven't founded Hyrule yet, then the Zonai descended and founded the kingdom along with Skyloft's descendants.
BUT if this is how it went then why the hell is Ganondorf already there that far back? I thought it was established that Ocarina's Ganondorf was the first, but if TotK's Zelda memories take place before Ocarina (at the beginning of Hyrule) then not only was there another Ganondorf before him, but said other-Ganondorf was technically sorta still alive under Hyrule Castle even while other reincarnations of him came along. Which doesn't seem right.
Plus The Imprisoning War was supposed to be about Ganondorf attaining the full Triforce after Ocarina of Time and having to be sealed away in the Sacred Realm, leading to Link to the Past.
This Imprisoning War, however, is about him attaining the queen's stone and becoming so powerful that he has to be sealed under the castle. Nothing about the Triforce or the Sacred Realm at all. So this isn't even the same Imprisoning War, they just reused the name. Which.. confused the hell outta me for a good long while before I realized it. And now instead of confused I am irritated.
Plus plus, what we see from Ganondorf here mirrors what happened in Ocarina to an almost confusing degree. Are they retconning Ocarina entirely? Surely not but that's what it feels like, especially again with the thought that OoT Ganondorf is supposed to be the first one, and this story seems to mimic that of OoT's Ganondorf (just with a different macguffin than the Triforce (and a radically different King of Hyrule)).
So the only way my brain can make sense of any of it, and I absolutely hate this, is to discard the idea of the games being connected and go with that idea that "they're all just legends and nothing really connects" (which I can't believe because of how definitely linked OoT, WW, TP, and LttP are). But then the kicker to all that is, there's in-game stuff in BotW/TotK to suggest OoT and Skyward Sword happened. And I count the presence of clothing as more like non-canon easter eggs, but I'm talking about the big story plaques in Zora's domain talking about OoT's Princess Ruto, and the Sealed Temple from Skyward Sword having fallen into the Tanagar Canyon. So OoT and SS happened in BotW's continuity, but BotW's direct sequel seems bound and determined to contradict them. Hell, it seems to even be trying to contradict BotW a bit!! How was
no connection made whatsoever between the Calamity Ganon and a dude named
Ganondorf, both of which spew red/black goop and command the same army of monsters? I know it's obvious to us as the audience but it seems so strange for the story and characters of this game to not actually connect Ganondorf to Ganon. I don't understand. My head hurts.
I still love Akkala.
The new enemies were
fantastic, and were one of the things I felt was missing from BotW. The Boss Bokoblin fights are fun, the patrolling Taluses are a neat switch-up, the Froxes are basically Dodongos which is
awesome, Gleeoks make their triumphant return in a big way, and the bosses.
THE BOSSES, YALL. Yet another thing I felt was missing from BotW was corrected with TotK. The Colgera gave me chills (and accidentally running into it again in The Depths was a terrifying surprise) but the biggie, yall. The first Zelda boss that stuck in my head from childhood and I was disappointed that it wasn't in BotW's world, but now it is.
The goddamn Gohma is back.
Absolutely excellent work there, no notes.
I finally managed to beat a Gloom Hands comfortably enough that the Phantom Ganon that followed didn't one-shot me. That was nice. Felt very accomplished. Still can't get a Gleeok's health down more than 10-20%, so they still terrify me.
So now with the Gibdos and Gleeoks, the devs continue to work my brain over by adding monsters that have only ever appeared in the Decline Timeline (in addition to the Lynels already being in BotW), to further cement my insistence of the placement of BotW/TotK. Too bad they are completely changing what the Imprisoning War was and are seemingly detaching it from Ocarina.
OMG THEY SNUCK FI'S THEME IN THERE
I really liked the Thunderhead Isles. That sequence coupled with the Construct Factory actually felt like Old School Zelda. I liked it a lot.
That final battle with Ganondorf felt easier, somehow? Than the Calamity? But more satisfying to me actually. And the victory lap battle with the dragons was neat, but didn't quite hit me like the battle with Dark Beast Ganon. I appreciated how Dark Beast Ganon felt thematically appropriate for the whole game, having the battle take place out in the middle of the vastness of Hyrule Field, and similarly the dragon battle here suits TotK, being higher up in the sky that at any other point in the game, diving all around and looking down at the whole of Hyrule.
Most satisfying though, gotta admit, was diving to catch Zelda. Perfect ending.
SO in many ways TotK fills in a lot of blanks I felt there were in BotW, but also changes things up in ways I don't like as much. Obviously the new enemies, the bosses, a "Dark World" that recontextualizes the map, and the presence of dungeons (even if they aren't exactly what I hoped for) are all things I felt were missing before, but then the traversal being compromised in a way, the reliance on crafting and vehicles, and the story are all rubbing me a bit wrong. So it's weird. I have a hard time right now saying I prefer one to the other because both have ways in which they excel over the other in my eyes. In a perfect (for me) world, the things like a Dark World with new dungeons, big new enemies and minibosses, and a big rug-pull story that involves Ganondorf are all the sorts of things that I was sort of expecting to find after beating the Divine Beasts and getting the Master Sword in BotW. So in a way TotK still functions as a fantastic "second half" that I wanted from the initial game (almost like what they just did with Xenoblade 3
), rather than a totally standalone experience. And that's great. I said in the beginning that what I wanted was new reasons to thoroughly explore the same Hyrule, and they definitely gave me that and then some.
For the time being, I feel like Tears of the Kingdom is the better overall
game, but I like Breath of the Wild a bit more. Granted, it was probably a year or two before I could admit that I liked BotW more than the other 3D Zeldas, so we'll see how long it takes me to fully come around on TotK. Probably not long.
