The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Ironically a lot of my 'normie' friends aren't all that excited for this one. They call it a "lazy reuse of elements", which I didn't see coming. I haven't played BOTW yet (yeah yeah yeah), so can't judge. Anyone here excited for it?

Wasn't this - at one point - DLC for BotW, which was apparently big enough for the devs to make it into an actual sequel (what we see right here)? Would be surprised if it was NOT just heavy asset reuse. And the funny thing is that (according to what I have heard) the game already has DLC planned.

So, when you think about it, what was once DLC, will now be getting DLC. Amusing.

>excited
Not really. I've yet to play BotW myself (and any other 3D Zelda other than OoT, really).

A friend of mine told me he wanted to buy it and I said "You know the game uses the same map, right?" and he was baffled at the dev time and price behind the game when it has the same fucking map and engine as the previous one.
Anyway, not really looking forward to it. Played BotW and liked it but not anything beyond that. They should really spice up the "normal" combat, enemy design and puzzle design for me to consider it. If it's just BotW 2: Now With Islands in the Sky edition then I won't bother.

It uses the same map? Really odd considering it releases 6 years after BOTW. the Zelda series, BOTW included, is in my backlog, but I do remember playing half of Wind Waker and enjoying it.

BOTW has more advanced gameplay mechanics but less real dungeons?

It's the same map but modified a but and with stuff added, which is ridiculous if you consider that Majora exists (same engine but different maps, dungeons and mechanics) and it came out 2 years later, but dev times aren't the same as they used to be.

>BOTW has more advanced gameplay mechanics but less real dungeons?
It has the chemistry system which is great and probably the biggest selling point. Just seeing how the stuff interacts in the game world is great. The other selling point would be freedom. This is basically "You see that mountain? You can climb that" brought to the extreme, and that is also great (even though it comes at the cost of boring traversal). The core combat is pretty bland, very few options, even less interesting ones, boring monsters, boring bosses, weapon durability. It gets improved by using physics and other interactions, but those are only useful for like the first third of the game, then it's best to just smack around stuff.
The mini-dungeons vary wildly in quality and difficulty. The normal dungeons are a joke compared to the others in the series. Very easy and short (with shitty bosses).
It's still a good game simply because it accomplishes its two most important goals (freedom and interactions), but the rest suffers as a result.

Looks like there is going to be more interactive utilization of ground materials by hauling them upwards transforming the environment above and below. Like how you can see in one trailer Link siphoning away water to then seemingly use to phase jump through a floating aerial mass. That's one new ability I am interested seeing a lot more of, if it can be used in multiple directions; additionally, could it be used on large enemies (i.e. rock golems)!?

I'm hoping the floating worlds play out like reversed shrines: you easily find and activate them into the sky but need to swoop down and chase after a specific resource to transport back and in doing so the sky world permanently stays up. A timer of sorts. Is it gonna be more than straight-down skydiving and straight-up phasing & riding and level flight? Enemy showcase-wise, I'm waiting to see sky-to-land enemy movements as that's where the emphasis of this game is; whereas, BOTW the Lizalfos were the most interesting enemies being able to easily transition from land to sea to chase after Link. If you spend more time in the air how will enemies respond to this, especially since the player is technically exposing themselves to far more vulnerability and lethality than otherwise being grounded?

The hype -- Well, this will be the most scrutinized game this decade. Already being compared to Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts n' Bolts (anyone here play that?). From what's been shown I'm mildly excited. What stuff Nintendo hasn't shown is where the real excitement is at; they're hiding the big feature. Don't forget they had UFOs in the original documents! Getting it Day 1.

I’m kind of dumbfounded by just how much it looks like more BOTW. It’s been 6 years and all we’ve seen is the fusion and ultra hand systems. These seem like they could offer a ton of creativity and experimentation but it seems like the devs have leaned extremely hard into the “player creativity” aspect of the game but didn’t really address anything else(if they did, I feel they would have showed it by now).

Probably will still get it since I like BOTW, but it’s hard to be excited.

I admit Fuse does seem pretty cool, I just hope that the endgame weapons won't make this system obsolete. That aside, it's basically a glorified expansion.

Been playing a few days mostly roaming the overworld and shrines (haven't started the main quest yet) and it's looking a bit grim. Feels like a low effort rehash that could have been DLC. Don't know yet what the rules are on posting about games pre-release but here are some notes (all spoilered). I mainly care for the combat angle so won't comment on the shrines and puzzles (their general length, difficulty, etc seem similar though).

Spoiler:

Again just early impressions though, hoping the game gets better as you progress and during the main quest.

Welcome! In general, no real rules regarding spoilers etc. It's a mechanical game forum, people are here to talk shop. It's more likely players are happy to see a user post notes so they can judge if they wanna hop on that game.

> plays like DLC
Heard some players in my friendgroup say the same, as in that they feared that might be the case.

Royta/Raeng wrote:Welcome! In general, no real rules regarding spoilers etc. It's a mechanical game forum, people are here to talk shop. It's more likely players are happy to see a user post notes so they can judge if they wanna hop on that game.

> plays like DLC
Heard some players in my friendgroup say the same, as in that they feared that might be the case.

Thanks - yeah, makes sense. I'll probably still spoiler anything before release date just in case but good to know.

Wow, that sounds awful, but honestly I'm not surprised. The main issues of BotW combat were the damage formula, pause to heal, weapon durability, the weapon moveset in general and the trash enemies. It sounds like only the durability got "fixed". Hope it gets better later in the game.

Sounds like they kept all the biggest flaws and made new issues. That’s remarkable.

As a sidebar (perhaps I'm missing something), but isn't the game not out yet for like 2 more weeks? How'd you get your hands on it?

Could never get into the first game so probably won't bother with this.

Infinity_Divide wrote:Sounds like they kept all the biggest flaws and made new issues. That’s remarkable.

That's my current impression but hopefully mid-late game brings in all the good new stuff....  

Royta/Raeng wrote:As a sidebar (perhaps I'm missing something), but isn't the game not out yet for like 2 more weeks? How'd you get your hands on it?

The game's leaked online for several days now, got it running on a softmodded switch. Should be out in a week though.

Does it seem to be that most of the exploration is just finding shrines and weapons that break again? The idea of going through BOTW's world was neat but then most of the destinations are pretty lame.

Infinity_Divide wrote:Does it seem to be that most of the exploration is just finding shrines and weapons that break again? The idea of going through BOTW's world was neat but then most of the destinations are pretty lame.

From what I've played pretty much the same as BotW in that regard yeah. Korok Seeds and Memories again too.

Saw the ending but it was in Spanish so I dunno what it means. Spanish class really didn’t help me huh?

Saw the English version, the ending was alright.

Hey you're that guy from Zesty's chat/comment section.

Hey Omar, welcome! NIce to see you made the jump to the forum :)

Thanks for the welcome!

Picked this up thanks to Reggie reminding me that it was out. Haven't played BotW1 but from the looks of it I'm not missing much if they're this similar.

The damage formula seems a bit stupid in the sense you go around expecting everything to oneshot you. This coupled with other aspects doesn't feels like Zelda, I can see why this game hits the bad spots of classic Zelda fans.

Got other points to brush up but I feel like they will just be a rehash of Botw1 discussions due to how similar they apparent to be.

Friend of mine is also quite disappointed with BOTW2 in the sense that, it's literally the same game. He was happy he didn't replay BOTW1 recently, as it would've impacted his enjoyment immensely. Can't say much else about it, haven't played 1, probably won't play 2 either.

Yeah I planned on picking 1 up if I liked this but everything just feels wrong, I can't get myself to enjoy this no matter how much people say it's a great game and how I try to see it as a not-Zelda game, f***ing Elden Ring seems to have more in common with pre-Botw Zelda than Botw does.

I was planning on at least finishing one of the big dungeons but after putting the game down for a few hours I had some moments of clarity and I just don't feel like picking it up ever again, I'm moving to another game.

Reviews for the game are out, if you're a fan of BoTW you will enjoy ToTK a lot.

I'm curious if this one will end up 'replacing' the original like you saw with Nioh 1 for example (most just play N2). I haven't played 1 yet, so curious if people will go "just skip 1 and play 2"

>if you're a fan of BoTW you will enjoy ToTK a lot
Makes sense considering it's the same game.

I saw skill ups reveiw and,it just looked like botw. I mean atleast some sequels that may loo k similar to the first can atleast have a noticeable difference in artstyle but this kind of just looks like the exact same game. It seems like dungeons are back though. Skill up said they were not that well developed though so……. Yeah. Also seemed they ditched the being able to go to the final boss right away appeal which sucks.

>watch Shillup's review
>get through the rambling about how the game is so good it can't exist
>hears him basically say the combat is bad
>wonders how any game with awful combat can be "very strongly" recommended when combat rewards and preparation are the driving force behind exploration, the game's entire purpose

Maybe I'm just crazy?

I even don`t have to say about this game. Look at my video for crossing swift stream.
I named this as "Twin Turbo Ice platform raft"

>skill up
Watched his review fully now(skipped through certain parts because of work). I think he should have just said “strongly recommend” rather than the actual title he put out. I may try the game since I usually feel like whenever I play a first game in a series I always feel bad for not playing the sequel since it makes me feel like I haven’t experienced the full story. The game’s exploration seems pretty cool but I don’t see the hype behind the mini bosses since they literally seem like reskinned normal enemy’s. Combat seems alright. Seems like there is some depth mainly with enemy weaknesses which sounds cool. Definitely does look like a pushover and I think there is no “hard” mode on release. Which is just such a bitch move haha. Probably gonna be dlc.

Played a bit further, finished like half the main story and a bunch of the (combat-oriented) side content. Sorted notes from what I find most to least relevant.

Content:
- There's a miniboss based on the old Gleeok enemy. First found the ice version, but they're present in most of the game's biomes (reskinned to fire/thunder as appropriate, but the differences between each of them are kinda negligible and mostly come down to the arena/environment). Pretty fun to fight and definitely the best of the minibosses. You have to disable all three heads (arrows being the best option) before it falls (easy to do in one opening with bullet time) and then you get to directly damage their main HP bar while they're downed. They're a bit too vulnerable to bullet time - some of the arenas you fight them in are flat/have no walls so the devs probably didn't want you abusing it but there are so many ways to set it up anywhere. Uploaded my earlygame kill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u05OcC9VH4U
Also saw that there's a "King Gleeok" that combines all of the elemental variants but haven't fought it yet, idk how much it differs from the others if at all.
- Lynels seem mostly the same as the previous game, noticed 1-2 new moves and possibly slightly different parry timings, but beat one on my first attempt with BotW muscle memory. Mounted hits remain durability-free but the time they allow you to mount for varies (can't remember if it was like this in BotW). Haven't fought any Silver Lynels yet but apparently they drop the highest damage fuse parts in the game. Also heard there's a 5 Lynel gauntlet in the underground (neat if true) but haven't done it yet.
- Floormasters were added and they're one of the more interesting mobs. Individual HP bars for each hand, surrounded by "gloom", and they can grab you as per tradition. They aren't immune to freeze though so Blizzard Rod kinda shits on them.
Additionally upon killing a Floormaster they spawn a miniboss: Phantom Ganon. He seems like a joke though, first attempt, mashed YYYY with a spear and occasionally dodging really slow attacks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xzQ9RBsLcY
Hoping he's buffed on subsequent encounters or something. If not, hopium for DLC/Master Mode to improve him. Really no reason why a humanoid miniboss shouldn't be on par with Lynels mechanically.
- Dungeons still have no minibosses and essentially no enemies. A few trashmobs here and there. Wasn't impressed by any of the bosses but they're less free to wail on than BotW's at least. Would put Thunderblight and BotW's DLC boss above the TotK bosses I've fought so far though.
- There aren't any "Gold" enemies ala BotW Master Mode, they're prob being saved for the inevitable (paid) DLC (along with Master Mode itself).
- The other new minibosses (Flux Construct & Frox) are pushovers. Basically all of the new enemies except Gleeoks, Floormasters, and maybe a few story bosses aren't worth mentioning. All of the returning enemies are basically identical as well (save for the occasional armored variant, which is identical after breaking its armor).
- There are some arena combat gauntlets in the new (extremely empty) underground overworld. The one I found was just a set of Moblins though.

Mechanics/weapons:
- Phantom Ganon drops "Gloom" weapons that have high base damage but reduce your health over time to 1 heart - they can't kill you however so provided you're competent at not taking damage they're probably worth carrying.
- Synergising with the above, Knight weapons have passive abilities that double the number of the fusion mat (giving them the highest damage potential in the game afaik) but only if you're at 1 heart or less of health. This allows you to run around with 100+ damage weapons which is notably higher than the highest numbers in BotW: https://i.imgur.com/1wCT4NV.jpg
Probably endgame meta. Heard Gerudo weapons have a similar mechanic but haven't done that area yet.
- You can use fuse to give elemental effects to the shield parry hitbox. This allows you to abuse the synergy between elements (freeze/electricity being the main one) without having to pause to swap weapons like in BotW. Shields can also fuse with rockets to self-launch anywhere (similar to Revali's Gale in the first game), easy method of setting up bullet time anywhere.
- Finishing the main quests unlocks allies you can "summon" as A.I party members. They lightly damage, occasionally parry & draw aggro fronm enemies. Enemies can hit them but they can't die as far as I can tell. It's not significant but I find it a dumb addition as combat is already easy enough, and their abilities are worse and more awkward to use than BotW's champion abilities.
- You can replicate Blizzard/Meteor/Thunderstorm Rods (best crowd control weapons in BotW) by fusing a Magic Rod with elemental Ores. They still trivialize mobs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FmxetnZ9r0
Some Wizzrobes also seem to drop fused rods by default.
Apparently there are 2H Rods with an even bigger AoE but haven't seen them yet. EDIT: here's some Scepter (2H Rod) showcase https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHQh3zpvpWQ
- P certain at this point there's no returning Ancient Arrows or equivalent. EDIT: nevermind, they're back in in as materials you can fuse to either arrows or weapons. +50 damage (for bosses) and OHKO for everything else.




Additional note, found a list of all the weapons/mats with associated numbers: https://i.imgur.com/cR9Bm6Y.png
tl;dr of the most relevant info:
- Gloom Club (2H), Gloom Sword (1H), and Gloom Spear have the highest base damage of their respective classes. Royal Guard's Claymore+ (2H), Master Sword (1H), and Royal Guard's Spear+ for non-Gloom weapons. The "DPL" column is damage per durability consumed.
- Taking into account their passive ability of doubling the fusion mat's number, Knight weapons can achieve higher numbers than the above but require you to stay at 1 heart or lower (you can still stack fairies for auto revives). Apparently Gerudo weapons do the same without the low health requirement (probably with low durability as a tradeoff) but haven't got any myself yet so don't quote me on that.
- Silver Lynel mats are fuse tops for raw damage number (55/51), and Gleeok mats (30) for elemental.
- Lynel bows are still uncontested best in the game.

5does wrote:Yeah I planned on picking 1 up if I liked this but everything just feels wrong, I can't get myself to enjoy this no matter how much people say it's a great game and how I try to see it as a not-Zelda game, f***ing Elden Ring seems to have more in common with pre-Botw Zelda than Botw does.

I was planning on at least finishing one of the big dungeons but after putting the game down for a few hours I had some moments of clarity and I just don't feel like picking it up ever again, I'm moving to another game.

Hoping they ditch the open world and go back to linear/structured campaigns ala the older Zeldas after TotK. Had fun with both and the mechanics have potential but the open world & pseudo-RPG baggage drag them down a lot. I'm exhausted with all the collectibles, grinding and empty space in TotK already and I've not even played it that long lol

Royta/Raeng wrote:I'm curious if this one will end up 'replacing' the original like you saw with Nioh 1 for example (most just play N2). I haven't played 1 yet, so curious if people will go "just skip 1 and play  2"

Yeah that's how it feels right now, it probably replaces BotW for being extremely similar while having a bit more content. Way grindier though and I really hate that they added A.I controlled party members.

>gleeok
Watched a boss fight video for all of the bosses for totk and the gleeok king is pretty much the same but has lasers. They look like they have a very repetitive loop you have to do.
>phantom ganon
Looks meh for a mini boss. Doesn’t have much attacks and gets destroyed pretty fast.
>return to old Zelda
Probably won’t since the ending of this game was still like botw pretty open so I doubt they won’t milk it again. Most likely we will see the next game in 2 years for a teaser trailer. Imo atleast.

Omar73874928271728 wrote:>gleeok
They look like they have a very repetitive loop you have to do.

Yeah they don't have many attacks (like 3-4 total), but I like what's there. Probably the only good miniboss across both games.

Doesn’t have much attacks and gets destroyed pretty fast.

It's a problem with all of the minibosses (Gleeoks to a lesser extent), they have extremely low HP. With endgame weapons they die in a few hits. Even Master Mode never fixed this for some reason.

>die to quickly
It’s a really weird thing with the new Zelda games in general(the open world ones). The damage value is GODAWFUL and the combat is broken to a tea.

Been playing this, pretty close to finishing. The building is really polished and intuitive, there's so much random shit you can do that works. It's an amazing game for messing around and experimenting, if you ignore the obvious solutions the game gives you.

That being said, so much is shockingly badly designed. The climbing, paragliding, healing are totally unchanged from BOTW, the increased linearity in the quests is annoying, and the dungeons are mostly a letdown. The game also has no fucking clue how to design or balance anything around the vehicles.

Nintendo basically made the biggest budget romhack of all time, extremely bizarre game but recommended if you have high intrinsic motivation.

I’ve also been(trying) to play this but not having much luck. The fact that they tweaked nothing that was an issue from BOTW after 6 years is astounding. Even some “fixes” don’t help anything imo- fusing is more annoying menu sifting and the novelty of making stupid weapons with a metal crate or bat wing attached to them wears off extremely quickly.

BOTW’s shrines were at least mildly enjoyable to me, these are just lazy. Every single one seems to involve building something or a combat tutorial. How about different kinds of puzzles? Maybe throw some enemies in for some dangerous sections? No? Cool.

It also can’t be overstated how underwhelming the sky sections are. The first time I was catapulted into the sky and then I got to glide down, looking at different landmarks was cool. And then I learned a lot the areas in the sky were samey yellow islands with the same handful of enemies and assets.

If this game is all about exploration, why do I not want to explore at all? The only things to find and see are monotonous shrines, the same few enemies, and weapons that break.

> nintendo releases Super Legend of Zelda Rainbow Edition romhack
That's a pretty funny way of putting it, can't say it's entirely wrong either.

> enjoyment
I never played BOTW seriously so I think I might enjoy this more, since I won't have the partial "been there, done that" feeling.

HotPocketHPE wrote:Been playing this, pretty close to finishing. The building is really polished and intuitive, there's so much random shit you can do that works.

It's mildly amusing but I can't say the whole "make random contraptions in an empty, non-threatening physics sandbox" angle appeals to me, or that it was a good use of 6 years dev time. There's very few vehicles actually worth making - the infamous "2 fans+steering stick" seems to outperform everything else for traversal, and while I've seen some clips of combat zonai builds none of them seem worth the hassle (might experiment more with it). The battery grind is also absolutely ridiculous and if not for the duplication glitch (patched in update 1.2 apparently, so I'll stay on 1.1) I wouldn't even bother with the zonai builds.

If they were going to insist on keeping BotW's map I'd rather they focused on adding more weapon types, more (and importantly, better) enemies, dungeons/interiors that aren't just shrine stapled together and more structured content in general  - as well as rebalanced how healing and menuing work (every Zelda before BotW already had it better figured out).

HotPocketHPE wrote:Nintendo basically made the biggest budget romhack of all time, extremely bizarre game but recommended if you have high intrinsic motivation.

Good way of putting it. Sad that Majora's Mask did the immediate/romhack style sequel better in like a sixth of the dev time.

Infinity_Divide wrote:BOTW’s shrines were at least mildly enjoyable to me, these are just lazy. Every single one seems to involve building something or a combat tutorial.

The number of basic tutorial shrines and "blessing shrines" (walk a few seconds for a mediocre chest reward between 2 loading screens) is ridiculous. BotW had way fewer, and "skipping" puzzles was a lot more technical than just holding a rocket shield. I'm still working on finishing the game but honestly I feel like it might be a sidegrade to BotW, they added more content but quite a few things about it are worse (not just the shrines but also stuff about the combat, will talk about it more when I finish the game).

Infinity_Divide wrote:How about different kinds of puzzles? Maybe throw some enemies in for some dangerous sections? No? Cool.

There are some "combat" shrines that strip you of all your equipment and force you to kill the enemies in the area but they're largely jokes, you just fight the same few trash construct mob types. Preferred BotW's Eventide Island and especially Trial of the Sword (although that was DLC - but so is TotK).

OOF, didn’t have to destroy ToTk like that. Also I think I have saw many of your videos on my feed.

Starting to look like a weird building game.

Only thing of interest to me though is making a variety of arrows types. If I played this, all I'd do is use confusion arrows.

Never liked BotW's combat so won't be touching this I think.

I played this game 25-ish hours and I do the first main quest (zora quest), and I agree with dungeons being not impressive, but how are you guys thinking about underground sections? It is more compelling to me than other overworlds. Underground sections function more like a traditional RPG rathern than an adventur game, but that`s what I expected when I saw the first trailer of BOTW2.

I think a Nioh 1/2 comparison is quite apt here. TotK is a bigger, better sequel to BotW that expands on the great ideas of the first game, arguably making BotW obsolete. But it also carries over most of the problems from BotW unchanged, so if you didn't like the first game, the sequel probably isn't for you either.

Omar73874928271728 wrote:Also I think I have saw many of your videos on my feed.

I think I'll upload a "speedrun" of the Lynel coliseum  (unfortunately they die in like 2 hits in this game until Silvers with an optimal Bone arrow setup). With the amount of damage you can dish out in this game they really should have had Gold enemies by default, but gotta resell them as paid DLC I guess. Might do a quick replay where I rush to Ganon with minimal resources then be done with the game until DLC (if it happens) or any mods I'm interested in. Probably go back to BotW until then since it has a bunch of mods I want to check out - as well as other, better games obviously (was working on RE1 before TotK released).

nepu47 wrote:I played this game 25-ish hours and I do the first main quest (zora quest), and I agree with dungeons being not impressive, but how are you guys thinking about underground sections? It is more compelling to me than other overworlds. Underground sections function more like a traditional RPG rathern than an adventur game, but that`s what I expected when I saw the first trailer of BOTW2.

It's comically empty, but I'd say it's better than the surface just for having "better" enemies (the same enemies with a gloom gimmick attached and armor being more common), an additional miniboss (it's basically a worse Talus though), gloom making you more careful about how you traverse (although it barely matters), the  Lynel coliseum and other coliseums, and boss refights.

Birdman wrote:Only thing of interest to me though is making a variety of arrows types. If I played this, all I'd do is use confusion arrows.

I wish those statuses were worth using but feels like you could just kill the mobs with 5x shot bomb arrows before they can do anything, or freeze for crowd control. I think confusion (or some other status) sets up sneakstrikes though which is like an 8x damage buff. Really wish this game had better enemies and fights to make use of the mechanics.

I played 10 more hours and I`m not doing any main quest and just roam around

I always try to "deal with situations by what you have now" approach, so I just turn off my nerve to RPG elements and quietly enjoying TOTK. But I agree that it probably won`t be fun If i was concerned about all min-max things.

Plus, In my opinion, Shrines are much improved than ones in BOTW. In BOTW, Yes, I can resolve the problmes how I wanna do, but sometimes it feels like cheating rather than a creative thought. But this time, they used many limits to squeeze my brain(note : I`m always not good at puzzles so my skill sucks and that makes me more enjoyable).

But One thing I highly agree with is that "Trial of the Sword" is the best part of BOTW and just do more linear approach next time. That DLC mission really encourage me to "deal with situations by what you have now".