#born2rig

i was a bit cautious when they showed those vehicles in the last trailer, but after seeing the new gameplay video i am completely sold.

i was wondering how they were going to deal with the weapon durability since it turned a lot of people off of the game, and people were throwing around ideas like crafting or repairing or just removing it.

this fuse mechanic seems kind of genius because it embraces that crafting and player improvement without sacrificing the wild and improvisational aspect that makes botw so special. i think making the player sit at a crafting bench prepping for five hours would've been a bad idea, and this new shit is perfect.

a lot of open world stealthy crafty games like these have a lot of useless items in them that i just never really get around to using other than really specific situations, leading to them wasting a slot. (i.e. scatterbangs in legends arceus or literally any of the consumables in elden ring)

having that type of item just pull from the infinite pool of cooking materials you randomly pick up or pointless physics objects that normally don't have an interaction is such a seamless idea that im genuinely impressed.

one of the first things i saw was that the ability slider was replaced with a symbol of an apple, which seemed strange at first, but after seeing how the rest of the video played out, i realize just how much of a gamechanger this is.

i dont know how to stress just how happy it makes me that you can just do this instantly when a contemporary game would make you sit at a bench or menu screen crafting x5 homing arrows

god i love zelda

fuck it this is a link fashion posting blog now

froggy suit + dinraal pants

full farosh set (with and w/o crown)

farosh shirt + dinraal pants

naydra crown + farosh shirt + dinraal pants

archaic tunic + dinraal pants

archaic tunic + farosh pants

i cant get over the fact that he paints his toenails yellow

trailer outfit (archaic tunic + archaic warm greaves)

cece hat + them titties + magical pants

trailer fit (hylian hood altered + champion's tunic + hylian trousers)

the hood still has the clipping issue six years later :/

trailer fit minus hood (sexcy)

full dinraal set

awwooga awooga heLLO NURSE

this is easily the best fit in the whole game

hylian hood + royal guards' greaves

glide suit + gaiters of the depths

midna's helmet + farosh shirt + gaiters of the depths

cece's hat + farosh shirt + gaiters of the depths

i think a better dye would pull this one together nicely

idk if anyone noticed but they played a seriously naughty trick on us.

in the intro, it shows link at 100% hearts/stamina, however

it only shows 15 hearts per row, 30 hearts total

this is obviously the same as the last game, however, in the ACTUAL game we get **20** hearts per row, 40 total

THEY FUCKING SCAMMED US

i was promised MAX hearts and MAX stamina in this game

there's 152 shrines in the game and something ish i dont want to count spare heart containers from main quests/side adventures, meaning that no matter what you do, you're either going to be missing max health or max stamina.

this doesn't really make sense in canon either, since the "lights of blessing" are supposed to *dispel* darkness suppressing the vigor from link's body, not add vigor to it.

so the fact that you can "restore" hearts that link didnt even have is kind of weird to me.

i mean the animation shows the container dissolving the gloom from his body after he got sucked off by ganon in the intro

i mean fuck the canon but why go through the trouble of breaking it if youre NOT GONNA LET ME CHEAT AND HAVE MAX HEARTS FUCK YOU

i mean my real theory is that they sliced 8 shrines (or just some method of getting the two containers) out of the game to serve back to us in a $30 dlc alongside master mode and whatever garbage voice acting they have cooking

//major totk spoilers ahead

The Good

Ultrahand is amazing, it's a simple idea with few limitations leading to a lot of complexity and flexibility

Ascend is fucking awesome. im not even gonna like, critically analyze this one. i wish i could jump through ceilings in real life

Being able to throw items is extremely useful, meaning you don't have to waste arrows to get certain effects

Zonai devices are all amazing, same principle of Ultrahand where they all have simple uses with few limitations, meaning that you can create really complex machines very easily

The Music™ 🎷🐛

Rauru's sopping wet man vagina

There's a shit-ton of new enemies, including like-likes, gleeoks, evil rigby mfs that crawl on the ceiling, floormasters, phantom ganon, the assorted zonai creatures, froxes, baby froxes, yigas with driver's licenses, battle tali, damn those trees are WALKIN

Depths exploration is fucking amazing

Depths atmosphere

Sky Islands when they have anything on them

Air travel

60 new side adventures, which are waaay fuller in good content than the side quests or even the main quests lmao

build your own house

the boss fights

the final boss fight

shrine puzzles with Ultrahand

Proving Grounds shrines

Master Kohga

the guy that walks around continually failing to demonstrate any degree of professional signage

the side dialogue is really funny and well-written

the isolated vibe of botw has been traded in for a feeling of togetherness as a kingdom

large-scale battles with tons of monsters and friendly npcs

muddle buds

zonai architecture

did i mention the ost yet

skyview towers > the ubisoft towers

link has his hair down

tauro

purah

short-hair zelda

rauru

ganondorf

mineru

been spending most our lives living in a bisexual's paradise

the lightning temple

the construct factory

the quest to obtain the master sword

dragonhead island

the dragonhead island music

fusing items to arrows and shields

the yiga clan expansion

do the earthwaker link come on quake that shit

the all-clucking cucoo

froggy armor

the lucky clover gazette

all of the new outfits

the dragon-themed outfits

horns on enemies

link let his hair down

the plethora of armor effects that are now also cooking effects, like slip resistance, swim speed, weather-based attack, and more

railgrinding

princess monoke themes doubled down on

gloom

robot arm

I think a common theme in this list is that rather than being different from Breath of the Wild, there is just more of Breath of the Wild.

"No shit, it's a sequel."

Yeah I get that, but this is the first time a Zelda sequel specifically has failed to really distinguish itself from the game before it.

Tears of the Kingdom has everything that Breath of the Wild had, including its flaws. The fact that it's just "more of it" and "better" kind of makes the previous game completely obsolete, which is a first in the series.

Majora's Mask, Link Between Worlds, Adventure of Link, the Oracle Games and Link's Awakening are all direct sequels of previous games, and yet their identity is so distinct that they become standalone entries in the series.

Majora's Mask is not Ocarina of Time 2.

Tears of the Kingdom is 100% Breath of the Wild 2.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and considering the series has been almost rebooted entirely I'm not even opposed to the direct serialization of these games,

but if they are going to go this route,

and there's going to be 6 and a half years between the two games,

You need to do better than the last game.

And so we arrive at,

The Bad.

With the exception of the aforementioned Lightning Temple and Construct Factory, the dungeons, and subsequently main areas and story in this game blow ass.

The Dungeons in this game are just Divine Beasts but with somehow even less creativity. Say what you want about the lack of interconnectedness between and the quality of the puzzles, but they provided a feeling of controlling and manipulating a huge, moving being that sets the game apart.

In comparison, TOTK's dungeons are completely devoid of any original ideas, instead opting to be divine beasts without the movement gimmicks, meaning that they're just "go hit the four or fie switches in any order"

Breath of the Wild traded in the unique and distinct atmospheres of the franchises temples to capture a different feeling that sets it apart. Tears of the Kingdom tries to return to the old temples, but without committing all the way and missing the mark completely.

The Water Temple in particular stands out as completely fucking lazy to me, since it is literally just a bunch of blue platforms in the sky with 4 un-themed and not even water-related puzzles and a boss that is treated as a joke. There's almost no buildup in Zora's domain as well, as you just do a couple of short tasks to unlock the path up and then beat the dungeon in 30 minutes.

It's the worst kind of Zelda dungeon, with generic elemental themes but none of the art to tie those into actually unique places. And considering that there's no dungeon items, no double-backing, or any sort of semblance of an idea of you completing an actual dungeon and not just four shrines in a meat grinder, I would say it's ultimately WORSE than the divine beasts from Breath of the Wild.

The rewards for dungeons

In every dungeon, you get an NPC follower that fights with you and has an ability that you press A on to use. These are used pretty well in their respective areas. When you beat the dungeon, your reward is a blue clone of them that does less damage.

I get what they were trying to do, I really do, and on paper, it's a really great concept.

It's the champions from the last game, except they are actually there and fight alongside you, using that togetherness theming i mentioned earlier.

However, having them out is pretty much a straight downgrade since they are annoyances 24/7.

Their abilties range from mildly useful in some contexts at best to "i would only press a on you by accident."

and trust me. you are going to accidentally press a on them a LOT.

Somehow, they manage to both be in your way when you want to do literally anything else and also never there in the rare circumstance that you actually want to use your ability.

Their AI is complete dogshit, and they rarely swing at enemies, and when they do, the damage is pitiful. Tulin flies through the air, and is mostly behind you when you need him, but everyone else paths along the ground and will often get stuck on rocks, river edges, or random patches of grass sometimes because they lack any intelligence whatsoever.

It's such an easy fix too, just have a "sacred stone" rune in the radial menu where the useless map one is and let me manually select which ability I want. Bam. No more blowing big hearty truffles off cliffs or setting them on fire when im just trying to pick them up.

Fuse does not affect the durability of weapons.

Rather than opting to have the interesting choice of being able to repair your weapons at the risk of losing a rare quality of them, rehabilitating them using items from your inventory,

Nintendo instead opted to have the durability not change at all when you fuse something.

Also, every weapon in hyrule has "decayed," which, as well as being extremely contrived, means that fusing is required for weapons to be viable.

So not only does this not improve the weapon system from Breath of the Wild, it actually makes it more tedious, since now you have to collect not just a weapon, but two parts of a weapon and then fuse them into a weapon.

It's taken every weapon in hyrule, broken them in half, and made you go find the pieces.

This also means that fusing funny stuff like minecarts or logs like they suggested in the trailer isn't viable, since it will only add a few damage points and waste a weapon slot.

In Conclusion

Yes, Tears of the Kingdom is the better game. It not only has more content, but the content is also just better, more experimental, and memorable.

And don't let my huge rant about The Bads misconstrue my thoughts on this game.

This is easily a 9/10, and probably my favorite game of all time.

But it certainly isn't a 10/10.

Breath of the Wild's flaws set it apart, it was easy to forgive them because they played into its unique experience.

Six years later, with an almost identically structured game, it's not as easy to set those aside.

was kinda miffed at these being reward areas when they were dlc in the last game until i realized that when you put them on the correlating sage gets the sage's helmets from the cutscenes

it should be obvious that pikmin wants to make its characters appear small, and pikmin 1-3 do that by having the really zoomed out isometric camera, giving the feeling of looking in a little diorama with pikmin in it. this was probably also due to technical limitations but was defo an intentional visual choice