I had decided to keep myself in the dark until I beat the game and it wasn't until yesterday that I finally did it. Not with the best ending though; at least I expect that there could be more. I managed not to look up anything for the seven weeks since release, including the extended breaks I took from the game because it pissed me off so much with its constant "one hit and you are dead" design. The difficulty sure is different than in Breath of the Wild where it scaled up linearily while in Tears of the Kingdom you come across blue and black enemies quite frequently early on. I was going at a rather good pace, but it still felt like I hardly made any progress. So I had played the game for six days, took a one-week-break, played another day, took another one-week-break because it annoyed me so much that regular enemies could still hit so hard, played another day and then moved on to Etrian Odyssey (which I managed to complete 100% unlike its original version, thanks to picnic mode and the hard quick save feature; random rare item drops from superbosses is some of the biggest bullshit ever).
Anyway, two weeks ago I decided to give Tears of the Kingdom another chance in hopes that the experience would be more pleasant the second time around. I started all over again, because that was going to motivate more than a save file that was all over the place and where I had forgotten for the most part what I should be doing next. This time the game clicked and a lot of the frustrating things were mitigated or eliminated.
I finished the game with ~49% map completion despite each thing added to the map accounting for only 0.04%. I am now above 52%, have activated all roots in the underground, completed 117 shrines, finished half of the sidequests and two thirds of the episodes. What still annoys me are shrines hidden within mountains because finding all those cave entrances is an ordeal with no clear idea for where to look. Mountains can be huge and caves can be expansive, spanning several hundred meters from the entrance to the shrine inside. I am now close to the point where I'll just say "screw it all" and then look up an interactive map and a guide to find the remaining shrines. Korok seeds will require a map anyway.
The good:
- Nintendo didn't mess this up. It looks like word of mouth is good and the game keeps selling beyond its initial hype tsunami.
The bad:
- For a direct sequel it's not as good as it should have been. The reused overworld map and shrine formula, the bland underworld and the barren sky make the game too reliant on its new mechanics.
The ugly:
- Where's the money? The vast majority of treasure chests in this game contain low-level rubbish. The same holds true for a lot of the rewards for sidequests. This is really the biggest obstacle for progression, because you can't feel comfortable about selling items that you possess in the low double digits. You can clear a path to the main quests on the world map, but buying the necessary armor is a real roadblock that forces you to spend a lot of hours on looking for sidequests, caves and everything else that has the potential to make you richer. This is where TotK falls far short of a Xenoblade Chronicles 3 where you can spend dozens of hours on optional content, but still always feel that you are making actual progress.
So for the next Zelda game it wouldn't be a bad idea to add something like an affinity chart to make interactions with NPCs more meaningful. It also wouldn't hurt to take a cue from Xenoblade Chronicles X with its hexagons on the giant maps. Breaking down a huge open world game into digestable segments that tell you about your completion rate is a lot more motivating than hoping that you randomly stumble upon something in an area that you've visited before.
In conclusion I'd say that open world games bug me, because there's so much time spent on running from point of interest to the next one. These games may be fun in the beginning, but they can drag and drag and drag as time passes. Replayability gets also damaged with this approach to game design. But hey, at least it sells and creates a market for other games to sell. Zelda doesn't need to be the quintessential masterpiece if it brings so many other action-adventure and RPG games to the Nintendo platform. I don't need a replayable Zelda when it's tough enough to play everything else there is.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
