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Reviews The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | Review Thread

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Reinhard Schneider said:
Well, this piqued my curiosity. Steph could be perfectly sarcastic here, but their review may still be worth a read.

Their review of BotW had a few mistakes that made me question if they really didn't put attention on the game (like saying that non completed shrines didn't work as fast travel points) but it was well written aside of that. The way they've been handling the aftermath for years is what soured me on them.
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The fact they made their cohost Laura Dale cry during a podcast after being overly harsh towards people who liked the game should have been a big red flag.
 
BassForever said:
It was years ago on Podquisition, back when Gavin was still one of the hosts. They were in the middle of a discussion when suddenly there was a cut and an explanation of what had happened and apologizes given to Laura. It was very uncomfortable.
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Seems like limiting myself to their Jimquisitions videos and reviews has made me miss some important stuff
 
but why tho gave totk a 7 and said ' For the right kind of player, someone who just wishes to explore and live in a gorgeously designed fantasy setting, this game will offer countless hours of enjoyment. However, if you are like me and when you are presented with a quest to undertake you simply wish to follow that quest in a way that feels fluid and rewarding, this game has some huge hurdles to overcome.
'
 
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BassForever said:
I don't disagree with the take, but the source and writer giving that take is EXTREMELY sus. Like an article saying "it's okay to find people besides your significant other attractive" on adultery .com from someone who is known to constantly cheat and lie about being unfaithful.



Brad is the reviewer though
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I think it's fair to say that, given Luke Plunkett as an individual tweeted out an image of a WWII aircraft with rising sun kill marks as a cheeky response to Kotaku being blacklisted by Nintendo, that it is absolutely fair to never acknowledge any piece of professional game journalism he engages in ever again.
 
That's why Meta- critic & Co can't be taken serious. Such troll ratings as 7 or 8 for TotK shouldn't even be counted.

Of course it's okay if you don't like the game's approach. But it's no objective rating at all and shouldn't eben be observed as such.
 
Rainbow said:
That's why Meta- critic & Co can't be taken serious. Such troll ratings as 7 or 8 for TotK shouldn't even be counted.

Of course it's okay if you don't like the game's approach. But it's no objective rating at all and shouldn't eben be observed as such.
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As someone who is loving TOTK, 7 and 8 aren't "troll ratings" and suggesting that is flat out ridiculous. There is no game in the world that everyone will love.
 
Rainbow said:
That's why Meta- critic & Co can't be taken serious. Such troll ratings as 7 or 8 for TotK shouldn't even be counted.

Of course it's okay if you don't like the game's approach. But it's no objective rating at all and shouldn't eben be observed as such.
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Please see our review thread guidelines that directly references posts like this, there’s a link to them directly above the reply box.

Which specific points in the reviews do you refute? Did you even read them? I don’t agree with every point in them but they seem largely positive and in the realm of reasonable opinion to me rather than ‘troll reviews’. No review in the world is ‘objective’, they are subjective opinion pieces by definition.

‘Butwhytho’ criticised the repetitive nature of the storytelling and cut scenes in ‘go to place, go find temple, get companion in similar cut scene to the last one’ and found they didn’t like the characters as much as BotW, and found a lot of busywork in an already huge game to the point that they skipped combat.

Noisypixel’s main issue was the reuse of the world, but both of them are in the context of positive reviews about the huge level of player freedom and creativity.

No need to look at scores in isolation rather than reading what someone is actually saying in an opinion piece. I’m playing it myself and there’s certainly elements I could criticise too around the story being told in repetitive fragments even while acknowledging that it’s a stunning, huge adventure game that’s going to take me months to finish. That’s something that isn’t always a positive for players more interested in getting to the next story beat than just exploring, and finding it very similar to the last one due to the gameplay loop of the player being expected to stumble into them in any order.
 
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@PixelKnight @Magic-Man

Fine, then i better will stop posting in this thread. Because i strongly disagree. But because of the question asked at me, give me this one last explanation, then im gone.

Zelda- Tears of the Kingdom is a super massive, super polished game. To review it with a 7/10 in my opinion, is a impunity against the developers. They let there lifeblood flow into this and it shows. Regardless if you personally like it or not ( look i dont like GTA for example, but i wouldnt give it a bad review for that)

You don't like the sort of storytelling and world- re- using? Okay, that's your opinion. But i like it a lot to explore, what have changed. I see absolutely no reason to devaluate the game because of this.

And it's because of such arbitrarily, why i can't take meta- critic as serious business at all.
 
Rainbow said:
Such troll ratings as 7 or 8 for TotK shouldn't even be counted.
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Rainbow said:
To review it with a 7/10 in my opinion, is a impunity against the developers. They let there lifeblood flow into this and it shows. Regardless if you personally like it or not ( look i dont like GTA for example, but i wouldnt give it a bad review for that)
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7 or 8 out of 10 aren't nearly low enough to be considered bad / troll reviews, though. There's a serious problem if we've gotten to a point where an 8/10 is now considered an insult to the developers. The assertion that good (but not excellent, or perfect) reviews shouldn't be counted is just wild to me.
 
Rainbow said:
@PixelKnight @Magic-Man

Fine, then i better will stop posting in this thread. Because i strongly disagree. But because of the question asked at me, give me this one last explanation, then im gone.

Zelda- Tears of the Kingdom is a super massive, super polished game. To review it with a 7/10 in my opinion, is a impunity against the developers. They let there lifeblood flow into this and it shows. Regardless if you personally like it or not ( look i dont like GTA for example, but i wouldnt give it a bad review for that)

You don't like the sort of storytelling and world- re- using? Okay, that's your opinion. But i like it a lot to explore, what have changed. I see absolutely no reason to devaluate the game because of this.

And it's because of such arbitrarily, why i can't take meta- critic as serious business at all.
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Metacritic has its own issues in terms of trying to turn subjective reviews into a dataset. But an opinion of ‘I like this setup’ is no more objective than an opinion of ‘I don’t’, so I don’t get how you dismiss an opinion piece of ‘very good but I personally didn’t like this aspect’ as ‘subjective’, but somehow an opinion piece of ‘I loved it all’ is somehow more objective. Both are the subjective opinions of someone tasked with critical appraisal of a massive piece of media, and the idea that even mildly dissenting, outlying ones that land on ‘very good’ are somehow trolling seems at odds with the idea of what an opinion piece is to me.

Just because the majority of reviews conform doesn’t make those pieces more objective. It just makes that particular opinion more common, something then reflected in the aggregate score. Which is at least what aggregates are useful for at a glance, but what they aren’t any good for is this idea that outlying scores are somehow less valid than those that sit in the middle or landed above the consensus. Somehow this idea of ‘troll’ review scores never gets thrown at outlying reviews that sit above the critical consensus.

There’s hundreds of reviews of Zelda. The idea that they are all only allowed to offer top marks or they get accused of disingenuous trolling is exactly why we set up our guidelines for review threads.
 
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Rainbow said:
They let there lifeblood flow into this and it shows.
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If nothing else, it is absurdly insulting to a lot of people who work hard on all sorts of games to say that if they only get a 7 or 8 metacritic that they didn't work hard enough. So many videogames are the result of tons of hard work of a huge number of people, and to imply that they weren't trying hard enough is horrible. Reviews aren't based on how hard you think people worked on a game, even if there may well be correlation.
 
Rainbow said:
You don't like the sort of storytelling and world- re- using? Okay, that's your opinion. But i like it a lot to explore, what have changed. I see absolutely no reason to devaluate the game because of this.
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Devaluate in what way? The problem is to think something is being devaluated because some guys don't like it as much as you do. The game is still the same no matter what and whatever review won't make it better or worse.

We are not talking about a small studio that will need word of mouth to be a suscess... the game is already a success.
 
Rainbow said:
@PixelKnight @Magic-Man

Fine, then i better will stop posting in this thread. Because i strongly disagree. But because of the question asked at me, give me this one last explanation, then im gone.

Zelda- Tears of the Kingdom is a super massive, super polished game. To review it with a 7/10 in my opinion, is a impunity against the developers. They let there lifeblood flow into this and it shows. Regardless if you personally like it or not ( look i dont like GTA for example, but i wouldnt give it a bad review for that)

You don't like the sort of storytelling and world- re- using? Okay, that's your opinion. But i like it a lot to explore, what have changed. I see absolutely no reason to devaluate the game because of this.

And it's because of such arbitrarily, why i can't take meta- critic as serious business at all.
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Well, reviews are mostly about how much the reviewer likes the game, so maybe someone could justifiably give it a 3/10 or something. You can't take the numbers too seriously anyway, it's not like it's science. And reviewers are very influenced by "hype" and such things. Reviewers throw out 10's (in theory it should mean it's a perfect game) like it's nothing. In my opinion (and to my sensibilities), TOTK is really an incredible game but 8 is a more realistic score than a 10.
 
hushh said:
Reviewers throw out 10's (in theory it should mean it's a perfect game) like it's nothing.
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In theory, it doesn't. That is an assumption made by you that doesn't correspond to the reallity. In fact, for one outlet a 10 score can mean one thing while for other outlet it doesn't need to mean the same.

This is EDGE for exemple:
  1. disastrous
  2. appalling
  3. severely flawed
  4. disappointing
  5. average
  6. competent
  7. distinguished
  8. excellent
  9. astounding
  10. revolutionary
In no place it says "perfect". In fact, if you go to Gamespot, a 10 is defined as "Essential". I am still to see an outlet that define a "10" as nonsensical as "perfect".
 
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I take a 10 to mean a game is as close to perfect as it gets, not that a game is perfect. A meaningful distinction, I think.
 
linkwashere said:
In theory, it doesn't. That is an assumption by many people that doesn't correspond to the reallity. In fact, for one outlet a 10 score can mean one thing while for other outlet it doesn't need to mean the same.

This is EDGE for exemple:
  1. disastrous
  2. appalling
  3. severely flawed
  4. disappointing
  5. average
  6. competent
  7. distinguished
  8. excellent
  9. astounding
  10. revolutionary
In no place it says "perfect". In fact, if you go to Gamespot, a 10 is defined as "Essential".
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Thank you for pointing it out, but that was just one part of my post and not exactly the point I wanted to make. As I said, it's not some kind of science and people shouldn't be so bothered that some reviewer thinks a game is an 8 and not a 10.

To be honest, I find EDGE's "10 = revolutionary" kinda silly when you check some of the games that got a 10 from them lol.
 
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People are allowed to give the game what score they think it deserves. I read that 7/10 review though and reads like a high school book report
 
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that's edge's old scoring system, it was changed years ago. now it's 10 means 10, 9 means 9, etc
 
Rainbow said:
@PixelKnight @Magic-Man

Fine, then i better will stop posting in this thread. Because i strongly disagree. But because of the question asked at me, give me this one last explanation, then im gone.

Zelda- Tears of the Kingdom is a super massive, super polished game. To review it with a 7/10 in my opinion, is a impunity against the developers. They let there lifeblood flow into this and it shows. Regardless if you personally like it or not ( look i dont like GTA for example, but i wouldnt give it a bad review for that)

You don't like the sort of storytelling and world- re- using? Okay, that's your opinion. But i like it a lot to explore, what have changed. I see absolutely no reason to devaluate the game because of this.

And it's because of such arbitrarily, why i can't take meta- critic as serious business at all.
Click to expand...

I totally see that the developers did a massive amount of work for TOTK (more than I thought at first to be honest) but the game is a 7 or an 8 for me so far. I really do not think that makes me a troll, and I don't believe that the people writing those reviews did it to troll. People just have different tastes.

And I'm going to make a wild bet here: in a couple of years, TOTK will be seen as more divisive than BOTW was.
 
Bosintang said:
I totally see that the developers did a massive amount of work for TOTK (more than I thought at first to be honest) but the game is a 7 or an 8 for me so far. I really do not think that makes me a troll, and I don't believe that the people writing those reviews did it to troll. People just have different tastes.

And I'm going to make a wild bet here: in a couple of years, TOTK will be seen as more divisive than BOTW was.
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So not really divisive at all then?
 
Rainbow said:
Zelda- Tears of the Kingdom is a super massive, super polished game. To review it with a 7/10 in my opinion, is a impunity against the developers.
Click to expand...

It's very possible for a lot of people to work very hard at making something and for the end result to turn out merely good.

It's not an impunity against the developers to not like the final product as much as others do.
 
Aurc said:
7 or 8 out of 10 aren't nearly low enough to be considered bad / troll reviews, though.
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Yeah, I feel that as long as someone does some reasoning, then that is cool. What I really took umbrage to was the massive outlier score who seemed to be dunking on the game for not being like "traditional" 3D Zelda, almost like they had been sat festering on forums for 5 years for a chance to complain that BOTW was not Ocarina Of Time but big and graphics.
 
Rainbow said:
That's why Meta- critic & Co can't be taken serious. Such troll ratings as 7 or 8 for TotK shouldn't even be counted.

Of course it's okay if you don't like the game's approach. But it's no objective rating at all and shouldn't eben be observed as such.
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I'm with you. We paid $70 for this game after it was in development for 6 years. 8 is too low a score for a prestigious $70 game.
 
Rainbow said:
That's why Meta- critic & Co can't be taken serious. Such troll ratings as 7 or 8 for TotK shouldn't even be counted.

Of course it's okay if you don't like the game's approach. But it's no objective rating at all and shouldn't eben be observed as such.
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Beating a dead Epona, but there's no such thing as an objective reviews, nor is there one single correct way to review, critique or analyse a game and place a score on the end of it because everyone's experience, gaming history and personal tastes are different.

Calling a 7 or an 8 a troll rating is ludicrous but even a hypothetical 3 or 4 out of 10 is an entirely reasonable score if that person really had a bad time with the game. I don't think the vast majority would agree with it but it would still be completely valid if they truly disliked their experience and I wouldn't ant them to uplift it just because it's well received elsewhere
 
Yamanoi said:
I'm with you. We paid $70 for this game after it was in development for 6 years. 8 is too low a score for a prestigious $70 game.
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Speaking of 7/10s and $70 games, scroll up the page and take a gander at post #777. That's not just about this thread, it can also be about prestige levels tumbling down. Everything is a sign.

Can Danny DeVito get this game back up to the prestigious Metascore of 97? What outlet does he work for?
 
Maybe you dont like adventure games, Zelda games or Nintendo Games in general but you dont give a 6 or 7 review score to a masterpiece just beacuse of that, you need to be unbiased when you are making a review.
 
I do think you should be reviewing games for what they're trying to be, and not what you wish they were. Flash forward a month to FFXVI reviews and I'm fairly confident we'll see some of the lower review scores lament that "FFXVI isn't a turn based game" despite it being obvious from day 1 the game never even advertised itself as that. It's fine to have that opinion, but it's clearly a spot where subjective opinion has to translate into "objective" review score where number based reviews fall completely flat.

I know personally I hate roguelike games, and would probably give every single one I played a 5/10 saying "I don't like thing" if my job was to review games. Sure that review might be useful to other people who hate roguelikes and are curious if this one will "break the cycle", but I've pigeonholed my review into one that's only useful to a small subsection of people. I think in situations like this, fault lies with the editor of said review site/magazine for allowing the known roguelike hater to review the new roguelike. That isn't to say give the game to the roguelike lover to ensure a high score, but more "who on the team is best equipped to give an opinion that would be the most useful to the most readers".
 
BassForever said:
I do think you should be reviewing games for what they're trying to be, and not what you wish they were. Flash forward a month to FFXVI reviews and I'm fairly confident we'll see some of the lower review scores lament that "FFXVI isn't a turn based game" despite it being obvious from day 1 the game never even advertised itself as that. It's fine to have that opinion, but it's clearly a spot where subjective opinion has to translate into "objective" review score where number based reviews fall completely flat.

I know personally I hate roguelike games, and would probably give every single one I played a 5/10 saying "I don't like thing" if my job was to review games. Sure that review might be useful to other people who hate roguelikes and are curious if this one will "break the cycle", but I've pigeonholed my review into one that's only useful to a small subsection of people. I think in situations like this, fault lies with the editor of said review site/magazine for allowing the known roguelike hater to review the new roguelike. That isn't to say give the game to the roguelike lover to ensure a high score, but more "who on the team is best equipped to give an opinion that would be the most useful to the most readers".
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There’s an Ebert quote about this that I can’t find right now but illustrated this point really well. He followed this advice and that’s what made him such a great critic.
 
Aurc said:
Speaking of 7/10s and $70 games, scroll up the page and take a gander at post #777. That's not just about this thread, it can also be about prestige levels tumbling down. Everything is a sign.

Can Danny DeVito get this game back up to the prestigious Metascore of 97? What outlet does he work for?
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"It is not the egg that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles during these trying times, or where the deliverer of eggs could have done them better. The credit belongs to the troll who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no troll without toll; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great eggs; who spends himself in a worthy cause asking people to pay the troll toll; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor pay the troll toll." - Danny Devito
 
Yamanoi said:
"It is not the egg that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles during these trying times, or where the deliverer of eggs could have done them better. The credit belongs to the troll who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no troll without toll; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great eggs; who spends himself in a worthy cause asking people to pay the troll toll; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor pay the troll toll." - Danny Devito
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I wish I could give this 70 Yeah!s
 
Come on, this game is already a commercial and critical success in every possible, getting 1 or 2 weaker reviews is pretty much inconsequential. Just move on, the game is good, go play it
 
Some of you take scores way to seriously.

Did you bet your life savings it wouldn't go below 97? Like why do you care?
 
SMALLVILLE BOY said:
Maybe you dont like adventure games, Zelda games or Nintendo Games in general but you dont give a 6 or 7 review score to a masterpiece just beacuse of that, you need to be unbiased when you are making a review.
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What in the review pieces gives you the impression that the writer doesn’t like adventure games, Zelda or Nintendo games? Which review, and did you read it? If you’re just reacting to the score tacked on the end to make stuff up about the writers, please see the review thread guidelines that are linked to above the thread reply banner and exist because of posts like this.
 
PixelKnight said:
What in the review pieces gives you the impression that the writer doesn’t like adventure games, Zelda or Nintendo games? Which review, and did you read it? If you’re just reacting to the score tacked on the end to make stuff up about the writers, please see the review thread guidelines that are linked to above the thread reply banner and exist because of posts like this.
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Im talking about reviews in general, take it easy bro.
 
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Any spoiler elements not covered in reviews is considered off limits for discussion.
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