Tears of the Kingdom sucks now, apparently

Nuh uh. It’s just a beautifully bad game, or whatever the journalists have said Edit: also say what you want about the game but ultrahand gave us so many funny things in the community

Istg for every TotK content I see, it's gonna be "Totk is bad" "new zelda sucks" "botw was cool"

i still need nintendo to give us a damn open world closed dungeons game. its that simple

I find it amazing that a lot of people have gotten tired of the open air Zelda when there’s only been 2 games that use it in comparison to the 5 games that use the traditional formula (not including the 2D games like ALTTP that also has a similar formula) but I think I may have a theory as to why. Zelda games have always been unique in comparison to other games, they’re not quite RPGS their not quite Adventure games their not quite 3D puzzle games. All of it was combined to make Zelda a very unique genre, and while BOTW and TOTK have Zelda elements they’re easily considered as open world games similar to RDR,GTA,Elden Ring, etc. there are so many open world games that it’s far easier for Open Air Zelda to feel tired. Funny enough if and when the series finally merged to two formulas, it should still feel like a Open word game but more importantly it will feel like a Open world ZELDA game. If that makes sense

I think I’m one of the few who played hundreds if not thousands of hours of Botw (to the point of 100% everything) who liked Tears of the kingdom just as much if not more. You could say it’s because it feels like dlc but honestly TOTK is Botw with more stuff and cooler things to do, better dungeons, story and bosses and more to explore. Sure the exploration I got from Botw May never be topped but TOTK just feels like the definitive Botw imo. Honestly the only reason I would recommend people to play Botw first before TOTK is if they are a casual gamer who would be overwhelmed by TOTK, or if they are somebody who likes character and story, and the events of bot could ad more weight to the events of TOTK, but even then I can just tell them to watch the cutscenes then play TOTK

The "Zelda Cycle", "Sonic Cycle" and "Star Wars Cycle" are natural byproducts of people having time to critically evaluate media after their honeymoon phases wear off. While TotK is a blast to play for the first 5-6 hours, eventually the cracks in the gameplay loop begin to show and the story becomes more questionable the more you mull it over. It's only natural to compare games and movies to their predecessors and determine what was done better and what wasn't, so I always find it a bit strange when people claim that these types of "Cycles" are odd or unnatural. There's still tons of people out there who love TotK and sing its praise, but of course more negativity will eventually arise the more time people have to properly analyze it.

I still think the game is incredible, also the motion controls at least aren’t forced on you. Then again, tears is the first Zelda game that I’ve really loved. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good story (I’m a big Dragon Quest fan), but freedom and exploration is something I need to some extent (hence why I hadn’t been into Zelda before). Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Sometimes I think I'm currently the only person who still loves and enjoys the game 🥲 Perhaps I'm a little biased, because my experience with it was so special... Not only the game but also some great changes in my life when it came out and the game will always be a part of this! But it also took what I loved about BotW and made it even better... Just hits my sweet spot I guess 😅 I see the flaws and I understand why some people dislike/hate about it. But my experience was different, I had so much fun and had this childlike joy and excitement that I haven't had in ages! Don't know why, it just happened... But: Some things really need to be changed for the next game, they can't do this a third time... And I'd love to have some elements of the "classic" Zelda formula back (dungeons with dungeon items, map, compass, small keys and the boss key for example). I hope they can find a perfect balance between both old and new 🤩

As someone whose first Zelda game was Wind Waker, whose original favourite Zelda game was Twilight Princess, and who had played every 3D Zelda game before BotW came out, I really like the open air formula and hope that the Zelda team continues to improve it. My biggest issue with TotK (which I think is a wonderful game btw) wasn't that it was open air but that it reused the map from BotW which made exploration not as fresh (although the caves were fantastic). Had the game taken place entirely within the sky (and by extension had more sky islands) or in a new land, I would probably have almost zero issues with it. I would hate to see the Zelda team drop or entirely change the open air Zelda formula akin to what BotW did with the traditional 3D Zelda formula when we're only two games into it as opposed to five. The open air formula is not what made TotK feel stagnating, it's that it reused the world of BotW which made it feel stagnating

It’s not just a cycle on Zelda. It’s in pretty much every gaming franchise. The Pokémon fandom is particularly infamous. Remember how when Scarlet & Violet released, it was canned for its glitches and Sword & Shield was cut some slack DESPITE them being hated shortly after they released back in 2018? It even extends way back to Pokemon Gen V; which myself and others initially found boring, but now is well-loved

Okay hear me out: New zelda game world is BotW style, dungeons are traditional and (mostly) linear. Story is traditional style cause new story style SUCKS.

I think that recall was definitely more game breaking then building in tears, and hopefully they bring a little more of what we love if we do get stuck with another open air game

I've seen people say that the open air formula has already gotten more stale than the classic formula ever did. 2 games over 6 years vs more than 10 games in over 20 years? This fandom has some truly insane people.

TOTK is basically a bigger and better version of BOTW, expanding from the ground to the skies and depths, and taking just about everything from BOTW and improving/building upon it (gameplay wise at least)

Tears is a confusing game, can’t tell if its good or meh, i wouldn't consider it bad, but it definitely wasn’t what we were expecting.

screw the zelda cycle, i already hated Tears of the Kingdom back in may 2023 😎

Tears had so much potential I feel like. Nintendo could’ve made it so much cooler if they would’ve learned how to make the game have an actual progressing story. Don’t get me wrong I loved Ganon in totk, but if he was actually doing stuff in Hyrule instead of sitting underground waiting, it would’ve been so much better. I wish they would make link relatable too, like link in twilight princess was perfect and is still my fav version. I rlly wanted totk to have new towns, or new music choice since it was in the same map. If Nintendo would just listen some times, and actually think about how to make a good story for an open world game, totk could’ve been soooo much better. There’s also so many story problems, many wondered why caves and wells, and sky islands randomly appeared while all Nintendo said was “because of the upheaval” they could’ve explained it way more and just using the upheaval as an excuse every time doesn’t work.

I think two things can be true at the same time: TOTK is disappointing as a followup to BOTW. TOTK, as a stand-alone game, is the best Zelda game we’ve ever had.

The thing with the Zelda Cycle is that it won't apply to BotW/TotK. I guarantee you. The change was way too drastic. Unlike with Skyward Sword, which is still mostly traditional in terms of its design. TotK and BotW completely threw everything out the window. The Zelda Cycle only happens when people don't give a game a chance or get mad and quitting at the beginning of the game, but learning to love the game after actually giving it time. You could give BotW/TotK 300 hours and you effectively wouldn't be much farther than you were at the beginning of the game (you get all your tools at the very beginning of both after all).

In my opinion Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are BOTH majorly overrated. Not because they are badly designed, but because they are too simplified WHILE ALSO being too big for the actual content they contain. In a vacuum I would say TOTK is the better game of the two, and if you stuck the Sheikah Slate in TOTK so that you had both game's powers it'd be the "best" those games can be. But TOTK coming after BOTW, with objectively minimal changes, it's just very tedious. MM reused OoT assets but made something entirely new out of it. This just copy-pasted 75% of the game. Again, I think it's BETTER , but not different enough to not make it feel extremely repetitive. Moving past that however, I feel the main issue with the game(s) can be summed up with "what's the point?". What's the point of fusing more than a couple different types of vehicles? What's the point of fusing items and gear outside of a very few specific instances? Most importantly what's the point of exploring this giant ass map? The game doesn't support anything complex enough to make discovering hidden things actually worthwhile. Take the weapon system: it literally just boils down to 1H sword, 2H sword, spear. That's it. Bigger number = better. You know what is an easy-to-point-to example of a game with a way better system? Souls games. Look at how diverse builds are in that game. Why? Because so many weapons have unique movesets. And people gravitate towards all sorts of different styles of weapons and armor because of their preferred gameplay style. In makes exploring to find new weapons a very meaningful goal and reward. Gear could have had a weight system that trades off mobility with defense or gives more tangible benefits than the very slight differences the current games offer. That's not to say I want Zelda to be like Dark Souls, I want Nintendo to take some inspiration from it and make their own thing though. You know another system that this game could have benefitted from? One from its own series - discovering new items. There's some of that old-style that Aonuma apparently hates now! Why does open world have to mean absence of classic items? (Put aside the dungeons they typically come with for now). Something like the hookshot could have been an awesome introduction that helped with climbing things. And it's a hell of a lot faster and simpler than "let me sit here fusing some stupid hoverboard for 5 minutes". Hookshot halfway up the wall, climb up, hookshot to another ledge, climb more. No more hookshot targets needed, just shoot at any rock or tree and go. They have such a large item pool of ideas to draw from for interesting uses. But all of this hinges on the game world supporting this stuff. And the fact is the world is simply too big the way it is now. 80% of the map is nearly worthless to explore. More of this stuff could be sprinkled around, discovering some special sword with unique moves in a mountain cave that requires the hookshot to get to for example. I mean this is just a comment I'm writing in 5 minutes with some ideas, imagine what we all know the Zelda team is capable of dreaming up with years of planning. The fact is they are holding back way too much.