I Just finished Zelda TotK and I see A LOT of room to improve (SOME MINOR SPOILERS)

[Ljink96]

I agree with a lot of what you said here. But I think overall, I'm just ready to move on from this era of Zelda. Breath of the Wild is in my top 3 games of all time and TotK improved on a lot of what BotW did. But somehow...I just don't feel the same way about Tears as I do Botw. I guess I just value completely new experiences more than familiar ones. While the sky islands and the depths were vast, they became really repetitive along with Hyrule which is changed but not in the ways I would have hoped.

The new enemies that were introduced kinda sucked ass. I don't think I ever took damage from a Horriblin, Boss Moblin, Gibdo, Like Like or the new flying things. The Gleeok and Gloom Hands were the only ones I really enjoyed fighting. The Flux Constructs were cool too. But man am I also tired of Bokoblin and Moblin camps. I too thought "oh my, there are gonna be pirates in Lurelin Village, let's go!" and then yeah it's just more lame enemies. The Yiga Clan thing got really old really fast too. I also wish the real companions followed you throught the entire game (and not the blue ghosts) but yeah they did get annoying at times.

Tears has some amazing gameplay ideas and features but I think overall it's an unbalanced experience. I'm just not a fan of the sidequests, doing silly expeditions just to unlock something that was already there in Botw, most enemies are not threatening a few hours in, the story is again a cutscene collect-a-thon, the 4 "dungeons" were kinda underwhelming, and I feel the music just isn't as strong as it could be. In terms of combat, while it is extremely varied, I wish using the weapons felt more impactful. In Twilight Princess for example, it felt so nice to use the Swords. They felt weighty and chunky if that makes sense. Botw and Totk has this thing where the weapons feel like putty moving through an enemy.

I hate to have to be so critical of Zelda, it's my favorite franchise. But I want the series to be better. When I played FFXVI I kept asking myself "why can't Nintendo make a compelling Zelda story like this"? Or while playing Elden Ring I asked "why can't Nintendo make more varied enemies or have more neat gauntlets to explore"?" And this is not to say what Nintendo did with Tears wasn't innovative, but I hope story, music, and combat are changed/improved in the next game more so than from Botw to Totk.

I am glad the game has been such a huge success and I enjoyed my time with the game. But as you said there is much room for improvement and that's exciting. I know I probably sounded like a whiny biyatch but I'm just being honest about how I felt about Totk.

PS: PLEASE NINTENDO, NO MORE KOROKS!