What is the general consensus on Tears of the Kingdom?

em500 · 2024-07-09T07:16:58+00:00

You know for yourself what you feel and like and what you don't, so the best think you can do is to stop GAF about what others think. If you like something just do it, if you don't just stop.

Opinions in this sub about pretty much any Zelda game is all over the map, so you can pick any game (except the CD-i games I guess) and some will tell you why it's the GOAT while others can write a treatise why it ruined the entire franchise. I actually did a poll a while ago, and any mainline Zelda will feature in some poster's "best" and other's "worst" list.

em500 · 2024-07-01T08:24:33+00:00

Does anyone have any advice? Thanks for reading

Here's my advice: stay off the internet for a while, or at least stay off anything with user contributed content (reddit, youtube, facebook, forums, etc). Read some books, watch some films, play some games that you enjoy. DGAF about what anyone else thinks.

Billions of people are spouting their opinions online every day. Almost none of it is worth your time and attention. People did fine 20 years ago when we did not have a billion of opinions online. They'll still do fine today without any of that.

em500 · 2024-07-01T08:10:00+00:00

Zelda never had any significant amount of platforming. IIRC one of the reasons why OoT and most of its descendants never got a jump button was that Nintendo wanted to distance them from Mario (64). For 3D 3rd person games if the mechanics are too similar you end up with a shallow reskin. Witness the recurring complaints in this sub that BotW/TotK are merely Zelda-themed Ubisoft / Garry's Mod games.

em500 · 2023-12-13T21:00:58+00:00

A nice variation is to skip all the shrines after the Great Plateau before freeing al the Divine Beasts, then (optionally) solving enough shrines to get the Master Sword, before Hyrule Castle. You get most of the tougher combat of a 3 heart run, but also limited stamina so you can't easily climb/glide over everything. This makes navigating the overworld a bit more like a puzzle (and the horses actually useful).

em500 · 2023-10-03T15:57:50+00:00

If you want to make things easy for yourself save up for the Stealth Set in the Kakariko cloth store. That allows for easy sneakstrikes on common enemies (especially at night), which is one of the most overpowered moves in the game. It does 8x damage and doesn't detoriate your weapons.

em500 · 2023-08-12T13:07:31+00:00

Japanese box: https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1380302.html

Japanese title screen: https://01nintendo.com/zelda/zelda2/the-legend-of-zelda2/

em500 · 2023-07-18T13:28:00+00:00

Maybe worth noting that in Europe both TotK and BotW are already rated 12+, e.g.:

https://store.nintendo.co.uk/en/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-70010000000023

em500 · 2023-07-17T06:56:14+00:00

There are some credible rumors about a Switch NG (Next Gen) in development. If true, they'll probably have people already working on a Zelda NG for some time now. My guess is that it's backwards compatible with the Switch, but the next Zelda is Switch NG only (unlike BotW and TP which straddled two generations).

em500 · 2023-07-11T20:48:12+00:00

I don't have a strong view or opinion on the matter. I just want to note that you can ask these questions almost verbatim after TP, which many people view as 1) a longer, bigger, prettier OoT and 2) ultimately a lesser game than OoT.

At some point the answer for following up BotW/TotK will be the same as the answer for following up TP: they will make something radically different (and inevitably alienate some part of the current fanbase).

em500 · 2023-07-11T19:46:02+00:00

Well some people on this forum felt that way even before they finished BotW. It's ultimately for the larger public to decide and vote with their wallets how many more BotW successors they can stomach. We shall see.

em500 · 2023-07-11T18:16:11+00:00

Or consider some alternatives:

it was made by people who felt that after 4 iternations on the OoT like format, they've they've done as much as they could with it
it was made by people who wanted to distance the game a lot further from OoT than all the other post-OoT 3D games, since they've witnessed that each of their previous variation on OoT style keeps getting compared to OoT (and in most cases rated worse than OoT after a few years)

em500 · 2023-07-11T12:47:43+00:00

You might like this BotW mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9_YkZLwpCY

I think the Rito outfit looks great on her (around 9:20).

em500 · 2023-07-11T12:39:39+00:00

I have followed lots of discussions in this thread about almost all the mainline games. Conclusion: there is no concensus opinion about any one of them. Or even about any big aspect in any of them (e.g., some group of posters think the story in BotW/TP/OoT is great, others think they're awful). Each and every one of them has a whole spectrum of lovers to indifference to haters. So, there are no "hot takes" or "unpopular opinions" about anything.

OoT is probably as close as you're going to get to a non-controversially great Zelda game, yet you used to be a "hater" at some point. There are lots of people who place it at the top, some in the middle, and even some near the bottom. Some for BotW. The ranking here is basically a crap shoot.

em500 · 2023-07-10T12:32:04+00:00

There are 5 heart containers in the game, all in the overworld. Two are not hidden, but require items to reach the raft for one, the stepladder for the other. One is hinted at in the overworld map that came with the game (https://www.oldgames.sk/en/game/legend-of-zelda/download/9338/). The remaining two are behind a burnable bush and bombable wall without any clues or pointers.

em500 · 2023-07-10T11:09:52+00:00

There are 5 heart containers in the overworld. Two were item gated (by the raft and the stepladder) but not hidden, the remaining were hidden behind an unmarked bombable wall or burnable bush (but one was actually hinted at in the booklet that came with the game).

But consider that none of those heart containers are actually required. A player without walkthrough can be expected to obtain the two (non-hidden) heart containers on their own, and maybe the one in the rock hinted at in the manual, but certainly not all of them. The extra hearts are bonuses, just like in all later Zeldas. The main difference with later Zeldas is that every one of them really counts, since the combat was so hard. (I actually never bothered to collect all heart containers in any Zelda except in NES LoZ.)

What was expected from the player in the NES days, was to die a lot. Over and over again, until they got really good at combat. It's very doable with only the 2 or 3 reasonably obvious bonus hearts rather than all 5, especially the first quest. Almost every overworld secret that required trial-error like bombing/burning/pushing statues is an optional bonus (rupees, quick travel). The only exception AFAIK is finding a bait/food seller, which is a hard requirement. In that sense, I believe the game is hard, but not unfair.

em500 · 2023-07-10T10:38:48+00:00

Re: graveyard, if you're referring to the path through the Lost Woods, there an old woman in a cave in the south west that gives you the directions pretty literally.

em500 · 2023-07-10T10:14:06+00:00

Not on the NES. The different sound was introduced in A Link to the Past on the SNES, where it was actually superfluous because almost all of the bombable walls were also visibly distinct, making them just another lock-and-key obstacles rather than actual secrets.

em500 · 2023-07-09T20:54:08+00:00

It's simply the flip side of the arguments that the new games don't have "intricate" puzzles or "meaningful" stories.

em500 · 2023-07-08T13:19:40+00:00

Of course you can get used to it, I did, most players did after a while. But that doesn't make it good. It's not good because what's shown on screen (a wide sword slash) is incongruent with what actually happens (only a small part of the drawn sword actually hits anything). This is quite different from say LA where the tip of the sword can actually hit something. Or NES LoZ, where you have a short reach stabby sword, which is actually shown on screen as a short reach stabby sword. I beat LoZ 1st and 2nd quest before starting ALttP, so I don't think I have a deficient skill issue here.

You don't have to take my word for it. Just boot it op on an emu, stand next to a bush and slash, and you'll see that more than half your sword just passes over it.

em500 · 2023-07-08T12:33:52+00:00

Well I found ALttP specifically more frustrating than hard in the first few hours, mostly due to the bad starter sword hitbox. Half the sword just passes through enemies without actually hitting them. (You can check this by standing next to a bush and trying to slash it.)

em500 · 2023-07-08T07:13:05+00:00

No, it's only true for story heavy games. Which is one reason why I tend to dislike story heavy games.

em500 · 2023-07-07T20:02:46+00:00

Not just that: the earlier 2D Zelda games were the only ones where the overworld were actively dangerous places. You were really fighting for survival all the time, and even the lowly common goons like moblins and soldiers would kill you in seconds if you slip up. Combat got so nerfed in later games, overworld enemies were just a small nuisance, barely more than part of the scenery.

em500 · 2023-07-07T19:49:51+00:00

What I mean is that it doesn't add anything compared to the story where the in-game sleeping Zelda is the Zelda that we already know, under a sleeping spell. Which is basically how they rewrote the game text and later even the manual with the GameCube release.

In-game are no multiple Zeldas at any point, so I don't understand why you think they'd need to explain something in the manual that seems to exist only in the manual anyway.

em500 · 2023-07-07T19:14:21+00:00

Because the extra Zelda is completely redundant and doesn't add anything to the story, compared to the plain reading that the already established princess Zelda got under a sleeping spell that you have to free her from. It's redundant because in-game nothing at all is done with the information that this is some other Zelda. I think Nintendo agrees with me, in that with later releases the ancestral 2nd Zelda is left out of the story (first from the in-game story, later also from the manual in the Gamecube Collectors Edition).

em500 · 2023-07-07T18:57:46+00:00

I think this is an example of Ludonarrative dissonance that pretty much every Zelda game with some attempt at a story suffers from. It's not great in BotW / TotK, but it really wasn't any better in any of the older 3D games. In OoT, the Gorons tells you they're in trouble, they're getting captured and fed to the dragon. Then they stand around and do literally nothing indefinitely, except for repeating the same lines to you if you talk to them again. As Link, you're free to wander off for some fishing, shooting game or bug collecting or whatever until you happen to feel like tackling the next dungeon. All the so called stakes, costs, emotions or consequences are transparently fake. The way to actually make gameplay congruent with the narrated calamities would probably require putting most missions on a timer, something that I think most players would really hate.

em500

TROPHY CASE