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03/01 - The Last Campfire
05/01 - Splatoon 3
17/01 - Wolfenstein (2009)
22/01 - Fragments of Euclid
02/02 - Postmouse
08/02 - Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (Kung Lao)
26/02 - F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch
06/03 - Omensight: The Definitive Edition
09/03 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine
21/03 - Forza Horizon 2 (first finale)
25/03 - Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom
31/03 - Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (World Tour)
01/04 - The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog
16/04 - Knights Contract
20/04 - Strider (2014)
12/05 - The Sword of Etheria
22/05 - Lost Planet 3
26/05 - Disco Elysium
12/06 - Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition
14/06 - [PROTOTYPE]
18/06 - Zeno Clash II
29/06 - The Wonderful One: After School Hero
07/07 - Dante's Inferno
12/07 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles
19/07 - Van Helsing
27/07 - Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
28/08 - Shadow Warrior (2013)
15/09 - Kurohyou: Like a Dragon - New Chapter
24/09 - The Forest Quartet
27/09 - The Last Story
09/10 - Driver: San Francisco
12/10 - Soulstice
20/10 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
27/10 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
31/10 - Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone
15/12 -
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I thoroughly enjoyed this, it was a really great experience and a fantastic follow-up to Breath of the Wild as well. As for which is better, it’s hard to say, but either way this one didn’t disappoint and I had a brilliant time with it.
The biggest thing worth mentioning is that it somehow managed to make lightning strike twice by recapturing that sense of discovery and exploration that BotW had while still being set in the same world. It feels fresh and new despite the reuse, and manages to come across as quite unfamiliar at first and inspires curiosity. The way so much of the overworld has changed and moved around, along with the different ways you are encouraged to approach it does a great job of making you see it in a new light. Not to mention all the additions that were made, which I’ll get in to more detail later. Over time as you see more of the world it does start gradually feeling more familiar though, as you have more dots to connect together, but it’s still very impressive how it makes the journey to get to that point feel like something totally new. And there’s so much more to see now that I was frequently getting surprised by new things throughout the whole experience. Even when I was getting near the end of the game I was stumbling on unexpected things at around the 170 hour mark.
Although that said I think BotW does a better job with the introduction to the game. The early hours of that were so expertly crafted to gradually introduce you to the game and all its systems while slowly opening up to you in a way where you always had a clear idea of where you needed to go next, but you never felt like you were restricted at all. It somehow felt limitless but never overwhelming. TotK isn’t as elegant in this area. While on paper it’s fairly similar, in practice it doesn’t pull it off quite so well. It starts of feeling pretty restrictive in the introduction sequence, and then dumps a lot of stuff on you at once without a singular clear direction or near term goals. It’s not really a major issue though, as I suppose the game is expecting you to be familiar with the previous adventure and so you shouldn’t be intimidated by suddenly having little direction.
I like the new powers you get this time around. They are clearly iterations on what came before, so they feel more like evolutions on those rather than something totally new. Ascension is clearly a new form of Revali’s Gale, but I get the sense that it is an intentionally nerfed version of it. That power was arguably a bit too useful in BotW, taking away a lot of the thought needed in platforming. Ascension is a smart way of retaining something similar but which doesn’t completely circumvent climbing, and get you thinking about how to utilise the shape of the geography around you as well. Fusion was very good too. I often felt like the monster parts were a bit useless in BotW as I almost never felt the need to make elixirs in that game, so it’s good that Fusion gives them a new purpose here. It also doubles as a way to make the weapon durability mechanics more interesting as well. At first I didn’t realise how useful this power was, but it added a lot to the item management and the feeling that you are scavenging off the land as you explore. It’s fun to see what wacky combinations of stuff you can fuse together.
Ultrahand and building structures and vehicles was fun too, but I’m a bit more mixed on these powers. It’s great to be able to rig something together to solve a problem in an unconventional way, but it also felt a bit limited or awkward at times. It’s a lot of fun when you can come up with something yourself and it actually works. Like finding a way to give yourself a platform up to somewhere that you couldn’t get to otherwise. Or another contraption I came up with that allowed me to fight a flying enemy from way up in the sky while also covering me from attacks falling down from above. It also makes for a lot of really fun shrine quests that use these abilities in more varied and considered ways than I was expecting. But at other times you do something that feels like it should work, but then it doesn’t because the physics do something weird because they couldn’t be tested to work with 100% reliability in all situations. I found vehicles in general to not be especially useful either. They were often too slow, not versatile enough, or break with extended use. Given that they cost resources to make they can often seem like they aren’t worth the trouble. But then again, maybe that’s a good thing. Perhaps they didn’t want them to be too powerful and make other mechanics redundant. I was a little worried going in to this game that it would become too much about cars and flying machines rather than the more intimate exploration of BotW, or that it would be too easy to solve every puzzle with a small number of basic constructions. I was glad to find that wasn’t the case.
I wasn’t too hot on most of the new Sage powers however. This is another aspect that I think BotW did better, although I think those versions could have been improved too. They have more thought and complexity to them this time, but I don’t think that actually makes them better or more interesting to use. Once again the Rito themed power is by far the best. Tulin’s Gust is massively helpful when gliding around, and it also feels like a version of Revali’s Gale that has been understandably reigned in, while still being very useful. The rest I mostly don’t much care for. Yunobo’s rolling attack isn’t very useful for anything other than smashing walls of rock and taking down one specific boss. I don’t even know what Sidon’s ability is useful for outside of turning on switches in the Water Temple. Riju’s lightning attack doesn’t really do anything that just attaching a shock fruit to an arrow doesn’t, outside of a few select mandatory things. Yet it makes you wait around to be able to use it. Mineru is pretty helpful for riding over Gloom spots in the Depths, but for actual combat she is way too slow and unwieldy, and offers worse protection than just going on foot. But in addition to all this, having to walk up to each character’s avatar and command them to use these abilities is a big downgrade from how BotW did it. It makes using them really fiddly and something you can’t rely on in a pinch. It also means you have to contend with their frequently unreliable pathfinding. While it is kind of cool in concept to roll around with a posse of Sages, and they can maybe be somewhat useful in drawing aggro in combat, they don’t actually have much positive practical use and just get in the way a lot of the time.
Aesthetically the game is clearly very impressive. It doesn’t really change noticeably from BotW, but that was already a very good looking game. I was hoping that perhaps the level of detail might take a bit of a step up given how this was made specifically for the Switch rather than having to keep parity with old hardware, and maybe if you look with a magnifying glass you could point to a few aspects that have improved, but in general it’s basically the same for the most part. The world design looks fantastic and feels very alive and tangible despite having an obvious stylisation to it. The lighting too continues to be a highlight. The sunrises and sunsets are stunning. Some of the best I’ve seen in any game. Seeing them I couldn’t help but think it makes all this talk about how amazing ray tracing is supposed to make lighting in games sound rather silly. When you compare it to this game that is presumably working with a vastly simpler and more primitive method, TotK is able to create jaw dropping sights, while ray tracing hasn’t really produced any game that has wowed me in the same way. That said, there are some pretty noticeable frame drops in this game that can be a little distracting. More than BotW had even before it got patched too.
I like the visual design of the Zonai stuff a lot as well. It’s a clear iteration on the Sheikah look, but in a way that comes across like it’s an even older civilisation. Very ancient and mysterious. It looks almost Mesoamerican, but mixed with some Japanese influence that gives it a very unique vibe. The green and creamy colour palette is nice as well, and the magical effects work have an almost liquid feel to them that I like a lot.
The game makes a lot of changes that address many of the major complaints of BotW, which are mostly very successful. The biggest one being that enemy variety is much wider this time around. There are so many cool and interesting monsters to go up against now. It definitely makes stumbling in to them and engaging with them a much more interesting experience. The feeling you could get in BotW that you end up seeing everything the game has to offer in this department long before the credits roll is not an issue here. This is especially true of the larger monsters, that now also offer plenty of boss level encounters in the overworld. There are a bunch of very cool surprises to be had there. I do somewhat miss there being some kind of Guardian analogue among the Zonai enemy roster, but it’s hard to complain when there are so many other enemies that now fill that role in the hierarchy of opponents to face.
Another big change based on feedback is that the major dungeons all have their own unique visual aesthetic. They all look very good, and helps to give these places more personality unique to themselves, so that they don’t just feel like glorified Shrines reusing the same assets. My favourite of the bunch has to be the Wind Temple. It’s got a sort of Viking longboat look to it, but made out of stone. Seeing them up in the sky and circling around a tornado is a very evocative image too. Each dungeon boss also being unique is much appreciated as well.
I like the expansions to the overworld a lot too. If the additions to the ground level of Hyrule weren’t already enough, there’s a huge amount of new stuff with the Depths and the sky areas too. The Depths were a really nice surprise. I had heard about it before playing, but I was unaware just how huge that area is, basically doubling the entire size of the game. They have a great atmosphere too, very dark and ominous. It’s very eerie, and puts you on edge as you fumble around in the dark never sure of what you might bump in to. It has a kind of surreal tone to it as well, and it actually reminded me a lot of the Rift Planes from Gravity Rush 2. To the point where I think they might have been a direct inspiration. They also have that sort of otherworldly dangerous feel to them, and are places used to mining magical ores. A lot of the plant life you come across in the Depths also look very similar to what you can find in the Enchanted Zone in GR2. That game presented those areas as being more psychedelic though, while in TotK they have a fittingly gloomy tone.
The sky areas were cool as well, although I do sort of wish there was a bit more to it. It doesn’t feel like as big of an addition as the Depths, since there just aren’t that many islands floating up there, and what is there is mostly pretty small. But it provides another flavour to exploration that is still a pretty fun one. There’s this sense of precariousness as you hop from rock to rock trying to avoid falling down to the ground. It gives you a good reason to actually use your flying vehicles too. Some of the best shrines are up in the sky, as they can make a puzzle around simply getting to them in the first place. Being so high up in the sky also makes for some of the best visual moments of the game as well. It’s the best place to take in those jaw dropping sunrises and sunsets.
I did have some issues with the controls though. They are a bit clunky in a way that doesn’t really ruin the experience, but is enough of an issue to mention. There is a noticeable amount of input lag on a lot of things that can create some frustrating moments of fumbling at times. This was also an issue in BotW, but it was something I could overlook there. But in TotK I think it’s worth noting because the controls in general are more complex now, as you have more mechanics to wrangle. I found that trying to set up throwing an object or fusing an item to an arrow could be kind of fiddly in combat, which was not ideal.
I enjoyed the story in some aspects, but in others it was a bit lacking. Yet it doesn’t really feel fair to criticise the game too harshly on this front, as it’s not really the focus and is clearly trying to keep things light, as this series usually has done. At the same time the bump in production value over pre-BotW games does make it seem like Nintendo want this aspect to be taken more seriously, and some of the things I feel it came up short on were done better in older games. What I do like about it is that it nails the feeling of being a “legend”. It has a sense of magic and whimsy to it, but also like you’re seeing glimpses in to some long forgotten past that piques your sense of intrigue, and makes it feel like you’re seeing something rare and spectacular with momentous stakes. The finale in particular is great. It’s truly epic. The final boss is a big improvement over BotW, and the epilogue scenes were even quite touching in spots too. It’s also very uplifting and stirring at times, which it manages to achieve through expert presentation and likeable characters, rather than deep or intricate writing. It recreates the feeling of wonder and amazement of seeing a classic children’s fantasy film when you were still young and you had never seen anything like it before. Being able to inspire that emotion in a cynical old adult is quite the achievement.
Ganondorf himself was a bit of a disappointment however. I don’t think he’s an outright bad antagonist, and I suppose he’s better than Calamity Ganon in that he’s actually a character that talks. But he doesn’t really have much personality aside from being the evil guy who wants to take over the world. He doesn’t do anything in the current time the game takes place either, with most of his actions being relegated to the flashback sequences. It’s a shame, because his visual design is great this time around, and because we’ve seen how much better this character can be when given some pathos. There’s much more potential to get out of him if they really wanted to.
As for Zelda’s side of the story, I liked it quite a bit. I have seen some people criticise the direction they took for her in this game, and I can see why people would do so, but I thought it made for an entertaining arc that went to some interesting places…
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Zelda turning in to an immortal dragon was a very cool twist. Although I saw it coming a mile off it was still pretty satisfying to put it together before it was shown, and to then see it confirmed. My first hint was simply noticing that the dragons flying around the overworld looked pretty similar to Zonai and wondering if there was some connection, before the idea of that was even hinted at. Actually seeing Zelda become a dragon was a pretty dramatic moment, and having that be the key to the location of the Master Sword hiding in plain sight the whole time was a great touch too.
I have heard people say that it’s disappointing that this is basically another example of Zelda being fridged for the whole story, taking away her agency yet again as she loses all sense of self in the transformation. I guess I agree with that, and I do still wish for the day when Zelda actually gets the starring role in the game named after her, but by the standards of what plot lines she usually gets in these games, I think this is one of the better ones. She did what she did of her own free will this time around, and there was a sense of tragedy and self-sacrifice to it. It’s meant to be sad, but also showing her selflessness in doing whatever she can to save the world and help Link. And besides, she gets a happy ending after all and returns to humanity at the end of the game anyway.
It’s interesting how this game interacts with the Zelda timeline too. BotW already played it fast and loose, mostly ignoring the timeline but being set at the very end after a presumed merging of the different threads. TotK takes things further by directly referencing a lot of the stuff from Skyward Sword, but in a way that seems to outright replace it. A lot of the concepts and even names and events are taken from SS, except in this game they are referring to something totally new to the wider fiction of the series. I find it kind of amusing actually, how much Nintendo seems to be disrespecting its own lore. Before they came up with the official timeline they seemed mostly uninterested in the idea, but now they seem almost antagonistic to it. Almost like they only came up with the timeline just so they could intentionally ruin it to try to stop people taking it so seriously.
At this point I can’t help but feel like the future of the series is in a weird place. I don’t know where it goes from here, for kind paradoxical reasons. Almost every Zelda sequel has always been a big departure, ironically the one thing you could rely on. And ever since Wind Waker, new entries have been based off feedback from the previous game, but always in unexpected ways. Despite its iterative nature, you could never quite tell where the series was going, and that’s what kept it interesting. But now with the shift to the BotW style becoming the new blueprint, and both that game and TotK being received so well, that makes future games feel like something of a no-brainer. Just keep doing this kind of thing. But that ironically feels like a very uncertain and un-Zelda thing to do. No matter how good these games are, I don’t think this style can hold up perpetually, and basing a new game off near unanimous praise seems like a good way to get complacent. Especially when these two already share so much in common. That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that Zelda as a franchise should or would do, but that I can see as being a fairly likely possibility. I hope they don’t fall in to this trap, because even with a brand new setting and world to explore, these games are exhaustingly huge, and sometimes the pacing suffers for it. At this point I’m starting to crave a more concentrated Zelda experience again. I would hope Nintendo agrees, at least when it comes to building sequels off this same setting. Since there’s no DLC for this game because they said they achieved everything they wanted to within this framework, that would suggest whatever comes next will be rebuilt from scratch. But there’s also the more recent comments from Aonuma where he seemed pretty unreceptive to the idea of creating something more compact like the old games. While I wouldn’t want to simply return to the old Ocarina of Time template style, surely there’s a way to find something new which has a bit more focus.
I regret for buying it full price. The nostalgia always kicks in when they release a new Diablo …
