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curl-6 on 09 November 2023
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SvennoJ said:
curl-6 said:

There's plenty of direction and goals in Tears, it's simply directed by gameplay more than story, like other Nintendo games.

There's a literal main story with objective markers and everything that you can follow through in an entirely linear fashion if you want to, but there's also shrines, there's sidequests, lightroots, towers, korok challenges, wells, caves, if anything the sheer amount of goals can be almost overwhelming.

The trick with Tears is not to overthink it; don't worry about optimal efficiency, just go with the flow.

That's how I messed up the flow lol. Didn't overthink it, just went out and followed my nose to the things that stood out most, which royally screwed up the story and flow of the game. Hence I enjoyed the side adventures a lot more than the main quest which turned into a big mess.

And yeah, the sheer amount of everything was overwhelming. The variety was good, yet 1000 korok seeds (100 reach my friend), 509 compendium entries, 152 shrines (48 Rauru's blessings, 31 shrine quests), 149 caves, 147 bubble frogs, 136 armor pieces, 136 side quests, 126 different monster parts, 120 light roots, 81 Hudson signs, 60 side adventures, 58 wells, 50 skull cave encampments, 50 forts, 34 Yiga Schematics and camps, 28 fabrics, 20 sage's wills, and more. It definitely got repetitive.

More is not always better in the end. Nothing felt special anymore, just one of many. But it did facilitate turning the game into a nightly routine. Do some of this, some of that, not really getting anywhere yet plugging away and having fun. Nothing really memorable, just a comfortable routine. That's how I got to 300 hours play time while only remembering about 10-20 hours of content lol. Nothing wrong with that, but I can see why some call it the biggest DLC/expansion ever, rather than a true sequel.

BotW was amazing, TotK is comfort food. The best kind of comfort food there is.

The difference for me was, I couldn't stop playing BotW, played it every moment I had available. TotK I played daily, yet usually no longer than an hour or two, then I was 'full' and left it for the next day. I did have longer play sessions as well, yet it was very different from how I played BotW. I finished BotW within a month, a quarter of the time spend with the game while still 3/5ths of my total play time of TotK.

Yeah I also found that TOTK was best enjoyed in 1-2 hour bursts per day, just cos its sheer size made sinking long sessions into it feel a bit intimidating.

I played through to the end of the story in around 60 hours, played over 2 months, but after that I did need a long break, and I left it alone for the next three months until I just went back to it recently to play the postgame.

I didn't quite fall wildly in love with TOTK as I did with BOTW, just cos its core gameplay was no longer a such an eye-opening novelty, but at the same time, I can't deny that I did like the core abilities and the temples better in TOTK.