68% map completion now and I am seriously asking myself if I should bother. @Veknoid_Outcast The experience is way overloaded already. There are so many things that aren't fun to do and what's really missing is a sufficient number of main objectives that provide purpose to all the collecting and upgrading you do throughout the game. In the beginning there's this one door at the temple of time where you need four hearts to open it; back then I assumed that TotK might have a few of these doors as checkpoints for the overall progress. But there's nothing; there's actually less than in BotW which had an intimidating dungeon in Hyrule Castle; TotK doesn't even have that and that's why it all feels a bit hollow. A comparison to Octopath Traveler 2 applies here: That was another sequel in the same vein with baby steps forward and a lot of unpleasant things remaining unchanged.
The next game I am going to buy is the Atelier Marie Remake, eleven days to go until its release. I am very much looking forward to it, because the origin of the Atelier series is about nothing more than a game that is fun to play without the bloat of what Atelier games have nowadays. Something fun to play is what I really need now, so in the coming ten days I am probably opting to play Etrian Odyssey 2 rather than TotK with its growing monotony.
The next Zelda should either have half the size of Breath of the Wild's world map or a dozen of dungeons embedded in the same size as BotW's map; embedded like the Gerudo temple in TotK, that's what I mean with it. There needs to be more density of interesting places to visit instead of this vast emptiness with occasional korok seeds, treasure chests and minibosses. Zelda needs proper dungeons, filled with powerful enemies instead of puzzles. Such dungeons would give the experience purpose, be the goals that the player is working towards.
The difference between BotW and TotK is that players were more forgiving towards BotW because it was a step in the right direction for the Zelda series after all the lock and key mechanisms of Skyward Sword that greatly narrowed down the choices that the players had. TotK failed to take the next step and I think that's how it will be remembered. I am just glad that I didn't have high expectations, because otherwise I would have been let down tremendously. I had huge expectations for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and then was disappointed because not all of it could match or exceed the previous two games; but all that was complaining on a very high level, because XC3 joined the ranks of all-time great JRPGs and will be great to replay; I know because I already did a few times. But TotK... yeah, it's a lot like Octopath Traveler 2: A could-have-been that didn't bring to the table what it should have done.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
