Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom

[Tobal]

Moderator note - in future, any posts about games acquired illegally before release will get deleted. QC

About 2hours into tutorial island taking my time, have what seems to be all the crafting powers, it's not Zelda at all, it more a large adventure puzzle game using the crafting tools given to you to solve loads of things either with sticking bits and bobs together or a fusion of weapons and shields, and in this way it's nothing seasoned gamers wouldn't have already seen in garys mod or Banjo Nuts'n'bolts. Previously most of this in BotW was left to the Shrines but Nintendo seem to have littered the world with these interactions to, which is why im enjoying it alot more.

I've been finding it all alot of fun figuring it all out, but in no way is this game for children anymore, the controls are very fiddley as to be expected for a crafting game but i would have expected the Nitnendo polish to have come up with simpler ways. Specially annoying is rotating something flat to a vertical base, there is no direct action for it as i found through experimentation you have tap a diagonal direction on the d-pad while hold R button multiple times and it lots of things like these these don't explain to player, and much like BOTW you're left to you own devices, very little guidance so i can see how easy it would be for anyone to get lost even when playing attention, if you remember how to deal with temperature you shouldn't have any problems, as the game doesn't tell you how to solve it.

And there are crafting problems, reloading a save or dying and being checkpointed resets all your creations... this is a major problem for being able to easily redo puzzle attempts (especially in the open world), you basically have to get right first time or be forced to rebuild your creation and attempt again.

Menu problems return again, the BotW hardcore would tell you its fine but constantly going in and out of slowdown pause menus to swap and use powers, equipment, weapons still grates. HP/stamina refills are still full pauses to eat food, cooking is still the pause menu to fill your hands and drop it into pot, why pots just don't have pop up to interact would have been a simple and elegant way. Dropping equipment to make space for your limited slots is still clicking on each item for new menu pop up, to then select drop rather than a dedicated button. Attaching items to arrows is really bad, it pulls up your entire item inventory in a selection wheel in slowdown time, pure nintendo insanity.

Combat is same, mileage depending on how much you want to diversify your actions to look cool rather than just run up to enemy and rag on them to stun lock till death. Fusion equipment looks and is pretty cool but always seem to clip in to the ground which is distracting.

Early assumption on the game cycle, find and complete shrines to power up your McGuffin which unlocks temples, as for what temples are.. i don't know yet, i really hope it is a large dungeon and not a glorified 10 minute shrine.

While it looks like i've moaned alot it is a good game, worth getting if you like what BotW did or are fan of adventure puzzle game with physics based solutions and rewards you thinking outside the box with your creations.

[Neon Ignition]

It's been so dry this year I had just about started to pay more attention to TOTK but quite literally everything mentioned relating to crafting etc and the additions makes it sound like they've dialled up everything that would put me off more than the less pleasant elements of BOTW already did. Definitely happy to sit back and see how everyone gets on. I want a crafting focused Zelda about as much as I wanted a vehicle construction Banjo Kazooie.

I swear, taking Zelda open world and keeping it true to the previous games in the franchise more closely was so simple.

[Tobal]

Couple more hours into it, left tutorial island and my opinion changed abit... just the size of the map (same map as Botw) gives way to alot of empty space again, the tighter focus of the opening island lends to coming across little and medium sized puzzles alot more often, now im just looking at empty fields, however i am very impressed by the draw distance on the grass in these fields, its further than the PS5 ver of genshin and looks better to.

Without the flow of puzzles and current lack of crafting options to control what you make there just no need to craft anything outside of fusing new weapons when one (often) breaks, so its back to the BotW cycle of grinding shrines for upgrades. I can go attack moblin outposts for little reward, i assume i might get something for saving prisoners down the line.

Shrines i've come across have been very varied so far, however the extra objectives inside yet again give terrible rewards, oh you did this extra puzzle on top of what you just had to you do.. here's either 20 rupees, 5 arrows or a nq stamina drink.

There is a very nice attention to detail in the npc's around your powers and environment(like when it's raining), and speaking of rain, it still shuts down climbing so you might as well put the controller down or spend some resources on a camp fire to move time.

Other little niggles in the crafting keep coming back, losing any crafting progress on pit falling (1 hp loss reset to last position), dying and save reloads and trying to rotate items into the correct position is very frustrating.

[Tobal]

I'll take back what i said about the map, while it is the same, there is more than enough rework to justify it's reuse. Went slowly adventuring my way for the story lead to the north west, did a few side things on the way like get a horse, do the new replacements for the towers (massive improvement, love the animation), more shrines to get power ups, Korok stuff and get involved in a few of new sidequest activities i found.

Spoilers ahead for northwest story mission

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North west was Rito village covered in a blizzard, you meet up with the botw warrior and the new warrior to be which grants you a special power much like before, however this time thankfully it's apart of your moveset on a short cool down so it's integrated into the puzzles, and so began what felt like a least an hours climb into the sky platforming and gliding your way across broken ruins floating the sky, quite terrifying some of those jumps and this for me was easily the best bit of the temple experience, once get the sky boat which turns out to the wind temple, i had to go power up 5 locks which was more about finding the holes in the side of the ship than doing the simple puzzles you found, all involving gluing anything you could find to repair something like a switch handle with an icicle.

Quite a let down compared to the awesome climb up which i would consider part of the temple. Once done it was boss time, fun and spectacular looking mid air battle which turn out to be very easy. Move around using your gliding and diving to the ground followed by using the gushing air to push you back up and shoot slow motion arrows into the various body parts. Once dead, it did a genshin impact world quest where in the map updates, now with the snow melting and giving fulltime use of a phantom power of the new warrior.

Pretty damn good.

As for the story to that point

->Open Spoiler<-

it seems like a rerun of BotW, distant war in the past, the 5 warriors of the past have left items for the new generation to take up arms and i assume repair the master sword (rather than power it up), i hope Zelda stays stuck in the past, her VA is still terrible.

[Tobal]

The Gacha dispenser for the crafting items is really starting to get into way of having fun with the crafting system, specially when doing the Korok deliveries which have no tools next to them, so its best to just ignore them or just boringly pick them up and walk. At the moment you have find Gacha Dispensers which are in not easy places to get to, they seem have 3-4 types they will only give out, given out randomly from feeding them ruin guard items(yay more grinding), the few high quality ruin items i've had so far didn't seem to produce better results than the basic ruin guard items, anyway this just makes for casual play around crafting impossible, along with insane battery upgrade grind, loss of tools and your crafted stuff after any sort of reload, moving to far away or area load change(like shrines) and flight wings breaking after short time.

Maybe some stuff they could relax with patches?

[wargame]

I wish they had given an option to disable crouch, everytime I am in a heated battle, I end up in a crouch position. This was really annoying in the first game and just as annoying in this.

Just left the sky Island last night by the time I was ready for bed. Must have taken around 4ish hours, the map isn't very clear on Sky Islands and it becomes very difficult to see where there are massive gaps between land masses.

But once on the ground all is forgiven, I have new Shrines to hunt down and that to me was the best part of BOTW.

[huxley]

Mine arrived yesterday after noon. Put about four hours in last night. I got to what I assume is the boss, I paused there and will pick up once todays tasks are done.

[dataDave]

I wish they had given an option to disable crouch, everytime I am in a heated battle, I end up in a crouch position. This was really annoying in the first game and just as annoying in this.

Stop pressing the left stick in and it won’t do that anymore.

[dataDave]

I’m utterly astonished by the optimisation on display here. There’s no way it should be running this well. Once you touch down on Central Hyrule the LOD detailing and enhancements are instantly noticeable. It’s almost a generational leap over BotW.

[Golgo]

Very impressed with this after a few hours poking around. The environmental artistry and sound design is just beautiful, from the overall vistas to the incidental stuff like fluttering birds, as well as the in-game character animations and cut-scene direction which are certainly improved over BOTW - the animation of the

->Open Spoiler<-

Steward Constructs

is particularly amazing and quite endearingly lovely, even moving (didn't stop me whacking one with a tree branch to see what happened, mind). Intriguing set up of the story, and the

->Open Spoiler<-

new race look really cool - Rauru is a dude. Plus Link now has a spirit/robot arm like Finn out of Adventure Time crossed with A****aka out of Princess Mononoke, so...win.

Made the sensible adjustments, i.e. increased camera/turn speed to 'very high', locked mini-map to north, and switched out the whiny English-Canadian Zelda actress for the superior Japanese one. Jolly pleased with this so far.

[fishbowlhead]

I’m utterly astonished by the optimisation on display here. There’s no way it should be running this well. Once you touch down on Central Hyrule the LOD detailing and enhancements are instantly noticeable. It’s almost a generational leap over BotW.

Nintendo are going to ride those bones until their not even the shape of a horse, let alone any flesh left on it. But this is what you get with a tier 1 dev & set hardware they can optimise until the cows come home.

[huxley]

About 20 hours in. This just isnt wowing me as much as I`d anticipated it would. It just feels like a new game + at present.

[dataDave]

Made the sensible adjustments, i.e. increased camera/turn speed to 'very high', locked mini-map to north, and switched out the whiny English-Canadian Zelda actress for the superior Japanese one.

Clearly not sensible enough, turn off the HUD entirely for the Ghibli cinematics!

[dataDave]

Minor horse spoiler:

->Open Spoiler<-

Just discovered that you can call your horses from BotW. I've got my Geralt back. How lovely is that!

[huxley]

Another four hours and getting more of a feel for it. The shrines are all original without any repetition so far. [MENTION=1482]dataDave[/MENTION] that made my evening, will try that tomorrow.