Tears of the Kingdom this rivals some of the worst games i've ever played; and i'm a life-long zelda fan

[thePlinko]

I made my last post before seeing this: you just have to convince people that what they're doing is strategic, even if in reality it isn't. Think about games like Uno or Sorry where there aren't any real tactical decisions to be made, yet they still give you the illusion of agency by offering a couple key decisions that aren't necessarily always correct in a vacuum and are still incredibly popular games for people of all ages

That doesn’t make them well designed though. It’s still a mindset that should be avoided as much as possible. It’s better to have that agency than pretend to have it.

 

[Ghost of Mikeys Past]

That doesn’t make them well designed though. It’s still a mindset that should be avoided as much as possible. It’s better to have that agency than pretend to have it.

I agree, just stating the facts

 

[Angopik]

It applies to the entire game. Puzzle solving, combat, and navigation all struggle to have any semblance of meaningful choice on account of TotKs insistence on letting any solution work for any problem.

So if there were less choices, things would be more meaningful?

I don't really see how having choices equals us designing the game though.

That is 100% on the devs. It’s not the players job to make a game not repetitive. If there is a dominant strategy in a game, then it’s the developers job to break that dominant strategy. This is literally game design 101.

All games are repetitive. For sure some more than others, but especially true for Zelda. I'd argue BotW/TotK are less repetitive than the vast majority of Zelda games though.

This is categorically untrue. Literally the entire point of the modern Zeldas has been to appeal to a completely different demographic from previous games, most notably people who didn’t like the older Zeldas to begin with.

Umm, no. Modern Zeldas are geared towards the same fans they've always been geared towards. In fact, BotW/TotK are exactly what Miyamoto hand in mind when creating the series.

None of those older games had puzzles that could be solved by just flying around them with zero thought or effort.

Except they did. OoT had some of the easiest puzzles to get through

@whatever i asked a lot of clarifying questions about your initial post. It'd be nice if you provide more context.

Yes you're probably right that first-time players would enjoy it a lot, I think though provided they don't have years and years of one-player adventure-game gaming-experience behind them (though I can't imagine such a person being a first-time Zelda player though so).

I've been playing Zelda games since the first one. I think TotK is the best one. Sure, other ones did some things better, but on the whole, it's not really close.

It looks like it is a divisive game, it's not universally despised nor loved, so that explains the sales-figures; also, it's a 3D-Zelda, so it's going to sell quite a lot no matter what.

I'd say that's how most games are though. Especially for franchises that span decades.

 

[DarthCreeper10]

I did join just to post this yes. I hate reddit.com so this seemed the best place for it. Not to try and rain on the joy of others, no; I wanted to vent and provide a little voice for others who were similarly frustrated by it. I'm sure many people enjoyed it; many hated it also.

nah thats crazy lol

 

[thePlinko]

So if there were less choices, things would be more meaningful?

The more methods there are to solve a problem, the easier that problem will be. Letting the player solve a puzzle in any way they want just means that any solution that requires more effort will be objectively worse than one that requires less effort.

I don't really see how having choices equals us designing the game though.

The lack of them designing any way to make those choices meaningful is what equals us designing the game. It’s like I said earlier, if I have to arbitrarily restrict myself from the easiest solution in order for a puzzle to be fun or challenging, the puzzle as it is designed is neither fun nor challenging. Games need rules, otherwise they are by definition not games. If I have to add my own rules because the developers deliberately refused to add enough of their own then they have failed to release a finished product.

All games are repetitive. For sure some more than others, but especially true for Zelda. I'd argue BotW/TotK are less repetitive than the vast majority of Zelda games though.

Ah yes, “no thoughts, head empty, walk/climb in a straight line for 20 minutes until you reach the next shrine that may or may not have a puzzle in it” is less repetitive than “a series of dungeons that all have vastly different mechanics and each introduce an item that fundamentally changes the way you play the rest of the game in ways that let you unlock new areas” I guess.

Disregarding that, that’s not what dominant strategy means. In game theory, a dominant strategy is a strategy that will always achieve the best outcome regardless of what the situation is. This is something that a developer inherently needs to break whenever possible, otherwise the gameplay will stagnate.

BotW already struggled with this to an extent that no prior Zelda ever had before, mostly on account of the fact that its insistence on removing any sort of linear structure meant that the developers were almost never allowed to guarantee a players skill level or progression at a certain point, forcing them to treat a good 90% of the locations in the game like they were the first place the player visited after leaving the great plateau. Any ideas they wanted to reuse were basically never allowed to evolve or develop past their base form, and because of this a lot of puzzles tended to have the exact same solution.

Then with TotK they took it a step further and specifically designed each puzzle, obstacle, enemy, etc. with the intent on letting the player overcome it “however they want.” Now every single slightly difficult piece of terrain in the entire game can be flown over using readily available materials to construct a hoverbike with minimal effort. If any other developer released a game with a mechanic that even unintentionally let the player do that (let alone intentionally) they would be the laughing stock of the entire industry

You know, when Valve was developing Half-Life 2 20 years ago they had an idea that almost identical to Ultrahand, where you could solve puzzles by building contraptions however you want. They even had a prototype developed. They took it out once they realized that putting it in a structured game like that was an objectively stupid idea.

Umm, no. Modern Zeldas are geared towards the same fans they've always been geared towards. In fact, BotW/TotK are exactly what Miyamoto hand in mind when creating the series.

Bull****. BotW and especially TotK could not be further away from what Miyamoto had in mind when making Zelda 1. Do you want to know how I know this? For the simple fact that it would have been easier to make Zelda 1 far more open ended had he wanted to. It wasn’t though. It had a structure. It had mechanics that served a specific purpose within the game design. It had a progression that allowed for a smaller number of meaningful choices. All of these things could’ve very easily been left out, but they weren’t.

The simple fact that there was such a major shift in direction that happened to align with a genre that was trendy at the time is pretty solid evidence that the demographic for Nu-Zelda is different from the classic games.

Except they did. OoT had some of the easiest puzzles to get through

By simple virtue of the fact that they only had one accessible solution 90% of the time, no it did not. There is not a single puzzle throughout the entirety of OoT that allows the player to simply ignore it like in TotK.

 

[Angopik]

The more methods there are to solve a problem, the easier that problem will be. Letting the player solve a puzzle in any way they want just means that any solution that requires more effort will be objectively worse than one that requires less effort.

This doesn't answer my question.

The lack of them designing any way to make those choices meaningful is what equals us designing the game. It’s like I said earlier, if I have to arbitrarily restrict myself from the easiest solution in order for a puzzle to be fun or challenging, the puzzle as it is designed is neither fun nor challenging. Games need rules, otherwise they are by definition not games. If I have to add my own rules because the developers deliberately refused to add enough of their own then they have failed to release a finished product.

There are many games that are easier than Zelda. That doesn't mean we designed those games. Easy does not equal unfinished either.

But yes, easy can be less fun or challenging. That's a totally different argument from the one you're trying to make though.

Ah yes, “no thoughts, head empty, walk/climb in a straight line for 20 minutes until you reach the next shrine that may or may not have a puzzle in it” is less repetitive than “a series of dungeons that all have vastly different mechanics and each introduce an item that fundamentally changes the way you play the rest of the game in ways that let you unlock new areas” I guess.

Yes, less repetitive because there are many ways to get to the destination. There's also many other things that can be done along the way. Can't say the same for games like OoT, TP or SS.

When I go back and play those games, it's typically one solution for each dungeon. Now that's boring and repetitive. At least with BotW/TotK I have the option to do things differently. The dungeons in this game also provide more world building than previous ones.

Then with TotK they took it a step further and specifically designed each puzzle, obstacle, enemy, etc. with the intent on letting the player overcome it “however they want.” Now every single slightly difficult piece of terrain in the entire game can be flown over using readily available materials to construct a hoverbike with minimal effort. If any other developer released a game with a mechanic that even unintentionally let the player do that (let alone intentionally) they would be the laughing stock of the entire industry

This is how all Zelda games are though. Again, that was Miyamoto's vision from the beginning. Once you have the necessary items/abilities, progression is much easier.

You know, when Valve was developing Half-Life 2 20 years ago they had an idea that almost identical to Ultrahand, where you could solve puzzles by building contraptions however you want. They even had a prototype developed. They took it out once they realized that putting it in a structured game like that was an objectively stupid idea.

I'm not even gonna bother with comments like this.

Bull****. BotW and especially TotK could not be further away from what Miyamoto had in mind when making Zelda 1. Do you want to know how I know this? For the simple fact that it would have been easier to make Zelda 1 far more open ended had he wanted to. It wasn’t though. It had a structure. It had mechanics that served a specific purpose within the game design. It had a progression that allowed for a smaller number of meaningful choices. All of these things could’ve very easily been left out, but they weren’t.

I suggest you go read his early interviews plus ones around the release of BotW. Id suggest ooking into his miniature garden philosophy as well.

By simple virtue of the fact that they only had one accessible solution 90% of the time, no it did not. There is not a single puzzle throughout the entirety of OoT that allows the player to simply ignore it like in TotK.

That doesn't change what I said though. OoT's puzzles were very easy. Even as a kid when I first played it. Water Temple included. Boss battles were always simple as well. The Ganondorf/Ganon battle was a joke

 

[Malon]

@Angopik Sorry I'm not going to be able to debate it with you, you've asked good questions against my post, which I could answer, but to do do so would take a fair amount of time and energy from me and I guess I don't care enough to do that; go ahead and take a win from that if you want.

I feel as though you were back into a corner by Angopik's points. This sounds very much like you were trying to avoid having to admit that Angopik was right. If you could answer the questions, then do so. If you care about this so strongly that you only joined for this thread, you would answer the questions.

 

[Ghost of Mikeys Past]

I feel as though you were back into a corner by Angopik's points. This sounds very much like you were trying to avoid having to admit that Angopik was right. If you could answer the questions, then do so. If you care about this so strongly that you only joined for this thread, you would answer the questions.

tears must mean a lot to you because you get butthurt every time you see someone criticize it

I get butthurt every time someone criticizes wind waker, but wind waker does mean a lot to me, so why is tears so important to you?

 

[Hyrulian Hero]

Worst game? That's just dishonest. Yeah, I could say there was a lot of squandered potential considering they used the map, assets, and engine from BotW but that doesn't make it the worst game ever. Did I expect more? Yes. Was it better than Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace for PC? Yes.

 

[Angopik]

Sorry I'm not going to be able to debate it with you, you've asked good questions against my post, which I could answer, but to do do so would take a fair amount of time and energy from me and I guess I don't care enough to do that; go ahead and take a win from that if you want.

It's not about winning or losing these discussions. What I want out of people is more in depth answers, especially if you're going to bash something. You did none of that though.

I wanted to vent my frustration about the game and was hoping my post would resonate with some people, and it looks it did, so that's all I was looking for. Yes I'm sure I exaggerated at times throughout the post, like there aren't literally THOUSANDS of costumes to collect for example; but I know what I saw and experienced and I hope that people who experienced the game similarly can read this and have some small catharsis from doing so. Nintendo are far far beyond my reach, this post will have little to no effect on what game they produce next, so I don't think there's any danger of my words jeopardising the chances of the next game being similar to totk, and you liked totk so I guess don't worry about it.

You provided no context to any of your criticisms though. I guess if other people are like that, they can empathize with you. Misery definitely loves company. It's just very shallow imo.

If you're seriously genuine in saying that you very much enjoyed it, then good for you and I guess there are good times ahead for you with whatever this is that The Legend of Zelda has become. Of course Nintendo couldn't continue to re-work the OoT formula over and over forever, but I was hoping that BotW would evolve into something different to it, but just as good, but instead it's whatever TotK is, so oh well.

BotW/TotK is the culmination of everything Miyamoto wanted in Zelda. I'm glad Nintendo shifted from OoT formula. It was getting stale and repetitive

 

[Malon]

tears must mean a lot to you because you get butthurt every time you see someone criticize it

I get butthurt every time someone criticizes wind waker, but wind waker does mean a lot to me, so why is tears so important to you?

Because I quite enjoyed it. I want to try to keep liking it, but as a teen, peer pressure is immense. My brain sees someone who doesn't like something I enjoy, my brain stops liking it. I have to re-convince myself that I actually did enjoy it every time. And no, it's not because it was such a bad game that my views can be so quickly swapped. This happens to EVERYTHING. You'll notice I get aggravated when the criticism is for other things as well, not just Tears. Quite a few of my strong interests have been killed because of it. I had an obsession with insects for YEARS until teenaged me started feeling pressured to not like bugs, and I quickly stopped loving them so much.
My problem is when a "debate" is simply an argument. There's a large difference between the two. It's not Tears in particular. It's most things.

 

[Angopik]

Because I quite enjoyed it. I want to try to keep liking it, but as a teen, peer pressure is immense. My brain sees someone who doesn't like something I enjoy, my brain stops liking it. I have to re-convince myself that I actually did enjoy it every time. And no, it's not because it was such a bad game that my views can be so quickly swapped. This happens to EVERYTHING. You'll notice I get aggravated when the criticism is for other things as well, not just Tears. Quite a few of my strong interests have been killed because of it. I had an obsession with insects for YEARS until teenaged me started feeling pressured to not like bugs, and I quickly stopped loving them so much.
My problem is when a "debate" is simply an argument. There's a large difference between the two. It's not Tears in particular. It's most things.

Never let other people's negativity discourage you from enjoying something. Especially if they won't even bother providing more context to why they don't like it. It's not worth it

 

[Ghost of Mikeys Past]

Because I quite enjoyed it. I want to try to keep liking it, but as a teen, peer pressure is immense. My brain sees someone who doesn't like something I enjoy, my brain stops liking it. I have to re-convince myself that I actually did enjoy it every time. And no, it's not because it was such a bad game that my views can be so quickly swapped. This happens to EVERYTHING. You'll notice I get aggravated when the criticism is for other things as well, not just Tears. Quite a few of my strong interests have been killed because of it. I had an obsession with insects for YEARS until teenaged me started feeling pressured to not like bugs, and I quickly stopped loving them so much.
My problem is when a "debate" is simply an argument. There's a large difference between the two. It's not Tears in particular. It's most things.

look at why some of us longtime zelda fans are so outspoken about our distaste for the current direction of the series. Try to see things from our perspective

 

[Hyrulian Hero]

Because I quite enjoyed it. I want to try to keep liking it, but as a teen, peer pressure is immense. My brain sees someone who doesn't like something I enjoy, my brain stops liking it. I have to re-convince myself that I actually did enjoy it every time. And no, it's not because it was such a bad game that my views can be so quickly swapped. This happens to EVERYTHING. You'll notice I get aggravated when the criticism is for other things as well, not just Tears. Quite a few of my strong interests have been killed because of it. I had an obsession with insects for YEARS until teenaged me started feeling pressured to not like bugs, and I quickly stopped loving them so much.
My problem is when a "debate" is simply an argument. There's a large difference between the two. It's not Tears in particular. It's most things.

Agitha is impressed by the humility it takes to be honest.

 

[Captain_Jack]

if you're spoiler sensitive for this game then don't read this thread.

i was indescribably excited for this game in 2023. i have only now, in november 2024 finally got around to playing it, because for the last 18 months my life was so busy such that i would not have been able to give the game my proper attention to "enjoy" it. i literally cut myself off entirely from the gaming world in that time so as to avoid spoilers for it. this game is one the biggest disappointments of my entire life. i'm just going to list all the things wrong with it one by one and let them speak for themselves. pretty much the only thing i can think of from the top of my head that i liked about this game that botw hadn't already done is the music-theme to the sky, but even then it plays on repeat for dozens of hours and so you quickly sicken of it; the middle-english tablets side-quest was kinda funny i guess too, but only because i've read a little chaucer before, and even then i only understood half of them.

==========================================================================================================

there is NOTHING IN THE UNDERGROUND! just bosses that you've already fought a dozen times already, some useless 'schemas', zoanite to enable you to go and see MORE of the empty underground, and thousands of tongue-in-cheek references to the previous BETTER games in the series via the costumes.

i have rarely been so frustrated with a game in my life: some times in my playthrough rivaled elden ring and hollow knight in that regard—AND THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING!!! the way the planes would just crash into a wall because you can't see anything in front of you in the underground and so fall to ground destroyed, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, wasting many many minutes of your time as you try to explore, almost drove me to madness.

85% of the time the structures and machines you build just don't work or else collapse pathetically because the system was designed by ****-heads who should be working as basic microsoft representatives and not game-developers. and when they do work the time and tedium it takes to build them is usually not worth whatever they are being built for.

many of the shrines in this game BARELY have working solutions to them, and are otherwise some of the most frustrating, boring, tedious and painful things i've ever had to do in a video-game.

the sky is painfully boring to explore, hours spent slowly gliding across it with the paraglider or a plane that times-out inexplicably after 60 seconds. and then there's nothing at all even to be found up there except repeated bosses, the occasional shrine-puzzle and two light-reflection puzzles.

there's a star-island in the middle of the map that's too high to even reach! so have fun wasting your resources and time trying to get there!

often zonai devices you select to take out don't appear for several seconds so you go to your inventory to take them out again thinking you didn't do it correctly the first time, only to then end up having taken dozens of them out because then the first ones catch up.

the way the caves with wet walls or ice-walls cock-block you from climbing is easily as frustrating as anything elden ring spits at the player: the ceilings are too low to use the rockets or springs and so you are forced to painfully, slooooooowly inch your way up with a couple of ****ing hover stones.

the way zelda-ganon forces you to follow her around the whole castle before the phantom-ganon fight is just inflationary bull****.

almost every single npc paraphrases the same stuff! either "zelda's vanished, isn't that odd??!?" or "there are mysterious ring ruins in kakariko...". or else they just repeat the same sentiments they had to express in botw with a different spin. they almost never have anything new to say that hasn't already been presented in the official exposition of the story.

the way it constantly tried to emulate feelings and moments experienced in oot or botw or ww in cutscenes or otherwise was just painful, like making an enormous fanfare over giving link the sage rings for his figers—trying to emulate the medalion acquisition bits in oot—or zelda's final vapid words in the post-credits scene, vainly trying to recreate the feeling of the final scene in botw; or cece trying in vain to recreate moments from windfall island. giving the gleeok majora's mask musical motifs for literally no reason whatsoever other than to stuff another self-reference in there.

the construct temple boss was one of the most painful things i've ever had to endure in video-games.

the way the gleeoks for some reason can catch you with their beam attack when you run around them, but not when you run away from them: i guess they have trouble lifting their heads but not turning them??

from the get-go, copy pasting almost everything—map, enemies, npcs, etc.—from the previous game is NOT A RECIPE FOR A GOOD GAME!! and probably cripples the game outright even IF the rest of it is exceptionally good. majora's mask was very VERY VERY different to oot!

the cutscenes and story are terrible and bland and simple and boring, FULL of plot-holes and inconsistencies. the dreadful nickolodeon voices of all the characters almost made my ears bleed. ganondorf was about as dull a villain as you could ever imagine, riding as far as he possibly could his cult-reputation built by previous games. we see the exact same slow boring cut-scene FIVE TIMES after every temple! yes botw's story was simple, but it embraced that simplicity and delivered the story in a clever and engaging way, and though the voice-acting in that game could be a little grating at times, on the whole it was good, unlike this cartoon network cookie-cutter rubbish.

i've rarely felt more apathy for a main character in a piece of entertainment as i did for sonia and rauru—they did NOTHING to make me care about them!! you have cute floppy goat ears, I DON'T GIVE A ****!

the gerudo boss is bugged in that direct hits to the face sometimes will and sometimes won't make him collapse when he's in his sand state, so just chuck lynel bombs at him and hope for the best. also it's very unclear when the gibdo hives are actually vulnerable to burst and the game never even mentions this about them. you very much have to go out of your way to find the sand boots, and if you haven't found them then the gerudo boss is even more painful.

you're really going to force me to COLLECT AGAIN EVERYTHING I ALREADY COLLECTED IN THE PREVIOUS GAME!!! without even so much as a feeble attempt to explain why link somehow lost everything he owned when ganondorf cooked his arm?

the game seems to think we never played botw and so basically needs us to pretend link has again lost his memory so it can tell us all over again what everything and everyone in the world is, just so it can inflate itself even more.

the final phase of the king gleeok is purely down to chance whether you die or not, unless you want to spend hours grinding it to speed-runner level of perfection, so it's either hope you have a shield-rocket in order to shoot it down before it gets too high, or you die.

the akkala thunder gleeok was designed by someone with **** for brains.

the rain in general is almost insufferable in this game due to how rockets and springs are not the most common things to come by in the game, and besides it's good to save them for gleeoks, and revali's gale is gone. also swimming is horribly painful because cryonis is gone and trying to build a raft that works well is like having a stroke.

have fun with some of those froxes whose arenas are covered with gloom unless you want to cheese them with bullet time and arrows to eyes.

you're always fighting mobs of enemies on assist mode because tulin's always there at the ready because i'm not going to open the menu every single time to put him away, and then get him out again when it's over.

using the avatars is often annoying because they won't spawn if the terrain isn't perfect for them and then you have to run over to them to grab them blah blah blah.

good god having to cycle through my whole inventory every time i want to use a fie or ice arrow, or even just an arrow that's going to do more than 1% of damage, is horribly painful and absurd game-design.

the gloom hands are just another unfun, annoying, unsatisfying thing to deal with that drag the game down even further.

NO i'm not going to collect a single korok more than necessary having already spend dozens if not hundreds of hours collecting them in the previous game, so there goes another crutch the game was probably leaning on for the player's interest.

just getting around the map is a pain now because there are less warp-points because half of them are now in the sky.

have fun trying a billion combinations for the specific recipes required to upgrade your horse if you're not lucky enough to have stumbled across them by chance otherwise.

oh, and the camera is bugged when you try to shift it with z-targeting, sometimes it will move around, sometimes it won't, oh well!!

the self-referencing throughout the game is almost sickening, it's almost as if it knows it can't stand on its own shoulder-to-shoulder with the others, and so has to constantly remind the player that it is a 3D ZELDA GAME, like an annoying stinking old man constantly reminding everyone around him of the glory of his younger days.

and lots and lots of other little things that come up, that seem to be just down to lack of care and attention of the developers and designers.
==========================================================================================================

it's a bad game! and ironically still retains a large amount of that typical standard of nintendo polish! but we all know that you can't successfully polish a turd, no matter how much you try—the result, if you do so try, is totk.

the design of this game was disgustingly lazy and uninspired and bad; this was a blatant cashing-in on the success of botw, with minimal effort to offer anything new to the player. i'm a life-long 3d-zelda fan, and some the best experiences of my life have been in playing the previous games; i honestly can't believe myself when i say that i'm not going to play the next one unless it's RADICALLY different to totk. but honestly, nintendo are probably dead at this point: it's probably been downhill since skyward sword, with a brief recovery with botw. whatever and whoever it was that produced the nintendo games we loved 10 and 20 years ago is long gone now, and now some parasite has infected its empty shell and is just producing bland replicas of what was, much like AI does all over the internet, and much like phantom ganon's impersonation of zelda in this very game, ironically. i hope metorid prime 4 will be good, there's a chance at least as dread was good; but i doubt it at this point, as i think mario's even done-for if wonder's anything to go by. it makes sense that it would be so if you look at the rapidly degenerating world around us also, considering the state of global politics etc.

[p.s. before you try and say that i'm bad at games and so that's why i found the mechanics frustrating, know that i am clever and capable: i can make complicated programmes with java, had an exceptional score in mathematics in school, can diy-renovate a house, can cook complex things, have 1500 hours in competitive smash, have beaten almost every boss in elden ring in an extremely nerfed and difficult self-imposed challenge-run, etc. not trying to brag, just establishing that i'm not an idiot, but am intelligent and capable—and so am entitled to say that this game's systems suck ass.]

i do wish there was more in the depths and the skies but I love this game. I played OoT when it first came out and nothing in between until BOTW. I still tool around with builds for creative ways to take out the enemy. I go to certain areas just to chill and listen to the music. Pro mode without the map makes the BOTW layout interesting again. Giving yourself your own Master Mode rules also makes it interesting. One thing, except for looking for building materials, I never revisit the shrines. In BOTW I did to grind for weapons.