Guess Who Beat TotK Today! (Review)

June 3, 2023

Tags: Videogames

I just beat Tears of the Kingdom's main story today! And so I wanted to scream about my thoughts here really quickly with a spoiler-free review. Maybe I'll come back some day to give some more thoughts on spoilers.

Overall, the game is really fun and even amazing. Ultrahand is such a fun mechanic to mess around with, I've built a lot of fun stuff using it. Others have really pushed the mechanic to its limits and it genuinely feels a bit like engineering with how much testing and re testing and making updated versions of things you've designed in the past. I genuinely mean it when I say it feels like it teaches players the core skills of engineering. No, most of what you build isn't realistic, but you are learning how to be patient, how to carefully examine problems, how to work with limited resources (in the cases of shrines and when you realize "fuck I'm out of [thing] what else can I use"), and how to accommodate for other limitations like space, material properties, and gravity. None of it is 100% realistic, but it's more about the fact that you get used to such things which can be applied to the real world albeit with different limitations. Think like how working with redstone in Minecraft is sometimes refereed to as redstone engineering. That being said, I think my only issue with Ultrahand is that the furthest distance from which you can grab objects and the furthest distance you can move objects to feels like it's just barely too short. I understand this was a balancing choice, but I can't count the number of times I thought to myself "how can I not reach that" or "how can I not put it there".

Fuse alleviated the issue of monster fights in BotW not being worth it after a certain point. Monsters don't just drop weapons and potion ingredients, but also weapon parts - meaning that, in general, you'll be getting more resources from fights than you put into them so long as you didn't get in over your head or otherwise messed something up. Granted, as you progress through the game fighting lower-tired enemies will eventually become pointless, but to a far more acceptable degree than in BotW. In that game, I eventually avoided all monster fights unless I really needed a specific drop or they had a weapon I wanted. In TotK, I just ignored weaker monsters with worse drops in favor of stronger monsters with better drops. This system also made the durability mechanic much more bearable, as you could more reliably get good weapons.

The game also tried to make rain less annoying which it... kinda succeeded at. There's now a "slip resistance" stat you can get from armor, food, and potions. By and large, this works, even with the inclusion of surfaces that are always slippery to climb no matter what. But there's one floating sky island that's always slippery due to rain, has really sheer cliffs, and if you fall chances are you're falling out of the sky entirely, and I hate it with every fiber of my being.

Both the skies and the depths were fun to explore, each providing their own challenges and mechanics. All three "levels" of the map felt super different and expansive, effectively meaning that - even though they did re-use BotW's surface - the map size has been more than doubled, meaning there is so much to explore. I will say that most places in he depths feel very samey and that, besides a few major land marks, I probably couldn't locate where any specific clip or screenshot was taken without the mini map present. Sky islands also suffer from sameness but to a lesser degree. The skies could have also benefited from one or two more islands the same size as the starting one that are also unrelated to story progress. Both for sake of variety and for more places to explore. Regarding the depths again, I understand the desire to make the depths climate-controlled except for the lava area, but I do wish they let the Gerudo Depths be sweltering hot as well and mountain depth be freezing cold, each with their own aesthetic. Still, the extra spaces to explore with their unique challenges and loot are welcome, and I just adore how progressing in your exploration of one aids in the exploration of the others; exploring the surface grants you resources to get through the other two while also granting ways to get to the depths and skies, the skies have resources unique to them that make travel faster for all layers and depths travel safer, and the depths have resources useful for fights in all layers as well as upgrades that make travel faster in all layers. Exploring the depths also helps you find land marks on the surface (and vise-versa).

WE ALSO GOT NEW ENEMIES!!! The enemy variety in BotW was severely lacking, which has been largely rectified. Some enemies are unique to the depths and one enemy type is only found in one area on the surface prior to making story progress (after which it is depths only), but the increase is still greatly welcomed. Excluding color/skeletal/elemental/other variants, we went from 11 basic enemies and 3 "mini boss" enemies to 19 basic enemies and 7 mini boss enemies if I am counting right. More variety is always more fun!

Dungeons were also MASSIVELY improved from BotW! They all have unique themes and unique bosses rather than using the same theme/similar bosses. All of them were pretty good as well, still being completely nonlinear. That being said, there are some bosses that I didn't care for. I won't go into detail until the spoilers section, but the TL:DR for them are as follows:

• One boss you have to fight using a brand new mechanic that I don't think we were given enough time to really figure out, not helped by the fact that the second phase does that annoying "you must wait a random amount of time for the boss to finally do the one thing that will let you attack" thing. Not a hard fight in the grand scheme of things, but an annoying one
• The second phase of one of the Zora temple boss (which is what I'll call it to be as light on spoilers as possible) is so goddamn annoying. It moves faster than you and you have a narrow window of opportunity from which to attack. Not helped by the fact that... the way I'll phrase it here is that you need to be physically close to the thing that makes the boss vulnerable to attack to, well, make the boss vulnerable, but sometimes you're just. Not close! And can't get close enough in time! Just the second phase is bad, though, first is fine.
• Two phases of the final boss really rely on you being able to execute flurry rushes with tighter timing than usual or just tank the hits. Prepare to either practice perfect dodges or - if you're like me and just suck ass at timing - get a lot of gloom defense and gloom heals ready. Like a lot a lot of heals, the road to the final boss is designed to drain your resources. Maybe put a travel medallion down occasionally so you can leave, restock, and return while maintaining progress.

All that being said, the Gerudo temple boss is my favorite in the game and maybe even my favorite across the few Zelda games I've played! It's just a lot of fun, there's so much to keep track of yet it never feels completely overwhelming or annoying (though the very final phase of the final boss is very kickass and I love it too). In fact, the Gerudo questline in general was my favorite of them all.

I also liked how the first town (at least, the first one the game tells you to go to) will change over time to reflect story progress. Just a nice touch. And while I won't say a peep about the story I will say that it was fantastic. Nothing ground breaking, of course, but a good time for sure.

Very low context spoilers, you won't know what I'm talking about until you see it yourself, but the Gloom Spawn enemies absolutely should have been named either Dead Hands, Red Hands, or Wall Masters. Just saying.

My over all thoughts is that the game is good, really damn good. Solid 9/10 for me. There's so much to do and see and much fun to be had. It is absolutely worth your time. Your money, however... This is a $70 game instead of a $60 and, honestly, as much as I love it and want to recommend it whole heartedly, I find that it struggles to justify the increased price tag. The world is massive, yes, and the physics engine is still amazing, but it was built using BotW as a base. Had it not done that and still be just as bug and dense, yes, easily worth the extra money. But as a product based on a separate game that was $60, I don't find the extra stuff added to be enough to justify the higher price point. Either snag a used copy or use that voucher thing Nintendo has on offer. Just don't pay the full $70 if you can avoid it.