So I finished Link's Awakening which was a mostly fantastic game with a few flaws that, as I mentioned before, I could have done without and I think they put in there merely to make the game appear longer and so they could charge full price for it which is something they were always going to do with any Zelda game anyway because they know they can get full-price for it.
I loved that journey and was disappointed when it was over. That is one of the first games I have played in quite some time where I felt compelled to watch all of the credits and hoped there would be some sort of additional content after the credits.
So purely by virtue of the fact that my friend who has all the carts is out of town and this is the only came I have left I decided to play Tears of the Kingdom, which I will refer to as TOK from this point forward.
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I was less than thrilled to fire this one up because unlike a lot of the gaming community at large, I did NOT enjoy Breath of the Wild and didn't even give it much of a chance because of my lack of enjoyment of it. Even massive fanbois of that game will readily admit that it was a massive departure from what Zelda games are normally like, the biggest "flaw" being that weapons always break after a certain amount of time. So fast do they break, that it doesn't really make a lot of sense like "why would a sword completely deteriorate after you hit something with it 6 times?"
I think, but do not know for sure, that they kind of addressed that issue in TOK by making the weapons last a bit longer (like 10 hits) and also there are so many weapons just lying around that it really isn't a big deal when they do break.
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Other than that, as far as I can tell, the game is extremely similar to the first one but seasoned veterans of the first game that I have spoken to have said that TOK is in fact better than Breath.
You start out with a massive cinematic that features Link and Zelda exploring something that results in Zelda getting taken away from you because of course you do because otherwise there is no story, then you get, as is tradition, all your stats and powers taken away returning you to having basically no power at all and only 3 hearts of life.
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There's a couple of takeaways from this initial opening cinematic sequence(s): For one thing, I actually didn't mind watching it because it actually has a point and quite nicely introduces the overall story that would necessary for you to understand all that comes afterwards and two, I found the voice acting to be remarkably bad for a game with this much money behind it. Zelda's voice acting in particular feels wooden and phoned in by whoever is doing it and I am surprised that it made it to the final product... maybe it was too late to do it all over again.
Once you get out of all of that the game actually does a pretty good job of introducing you to the basics of the game and I think the devs knew that the "Ultrahand" ability was going to be a very frustrating aspect of the game even though it is a major component of everything that happens.
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This ability is something where you can pick up and manipulate certain items and place them together in order to construct bridges, boats, and even self-propelled vehicles to help you along you way. It can (and likely will) be very frustrating to figure out how to use these commands and put things together. I know that I was kind of at my wits' end when constructing a bridge of sorts only to not line it up very well over the gap and have it fall to the depths below never to be seen again. This does get easier as things go on though and you don't have to do it perfectly in order for whatever you are constructing to work properly.
They "hone your skills" as far as this is concerned by having certain dungeons where there are no enemies, but merely unlimited pieces of something sitting there and it is quite obvious what it is that you have to build in order to get it to work.
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You are going to have a lot of wonky-looking bridges
In the end you will get the hang of it and this is enforced through repetition. Will you get annoyed when your bridge completely falls apart or you finished your sled only to realize that you put the engine on backwards and it drives off a cliff? Yeah, that is going to happen but I think it was done intentionally to slowly teach you the ropes as well as to offer you opportunities to create whatever the hell you want instead of only having a few things that can possibly be constructed. You are going to get angry at how this system works at first because the rotation of various pieces seems really complicated when you first start doing it. Stick with it though because Zelda has almost always succeeded at being quite inventive at creating new puzzle systems instead of just forcing repetitive combat over and over again.
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Cooking is put back into this game and it is a major part of the overall game. This still kind of seems tedious to me because there are so many possible combinations of things to make but once you accept that this open-world Zelda game is meant to be really slow and long you kind of accept the fact that this game is very open to interpretation on purpose. There is no "one way" to complete this game and I am quite certain that just like Breath of the Wild there are people out there that have figured out ways to finish the game while only doing something like 5% of the entire map.
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Once you accept that fact that you aren't really meant to have a direct objective at any given point I think that things get better for the player. I think this will happen for most people once you leave the starter area and end up back on Hyrule and are given 5 objective points that you will resign yourself to walking around and exploring. This happened to me when I encountered an enemy camp that is just in the distance of the first area and I went in there and got my ass absolutely handed to me in just a couple of hits.
The system hints that these difficult areas aren't meant to be conquerable at this point because you don't have the necessary skills yet but I think that you would do well to accept this very early on: If you walk into a camp and get massacred 3 times in a row or so, it might be best to backtrack and try something else in the area. This is the approach that I have accepted very early on and my experience in the game has been a lot better because of it.
I am VERY early on in the game because I only have 4 total hearts out of a possible 30 or so. My weapons are also weak as crap and my mobility is something that allows me to run away, but not to maneuver a great deal if facing opponents head on. While I am not entirely sure of this at this point in the game, I think that this game is more about using your environments and less about building up your stats to take on multiple foes at a time.
So I guess when we get down to brass tax I should ask "do I actually like this game" and the answer is yes. However, I think it is important for old-school Zelda fans to come to terms with the fact that this, just like Breath of the Wild is a massive departure from all of the other Zelda games in existence. You have tons of freedom about where you are going to go and what you are going to do and if you can accept this and embrace it, the huge open world with tons of things to do is fun for a "different reason" than traditional linear-ish Zelda games would be.
I can see that this game is going to occupy a tremendous amount of time, much more than Link's Awakening and the stark contrast between these two games is a good showcase of how Nintendo knows that they can charge $60 for ANY Zelda title. I completed Link's Awakening in just a couple of days whereas Tears of the Kingdom is clearly going to take me multiple months, if I even complete it at all. To 100% this game would require a level of dedication that I am not anywhere near having.
It's too early for me to say if this game is "worth it" but as it stands now there appears to be just a huge amount of things to do and see in this game so thus far anyway, it seems like you are going to get your money's worth out of it. Just don't expect it to be like a vast majority of Zelda games in existence because it is a huge departure from most of the titles in the franchise.