23:02 Such a moment does happen if you reach the Demon Dragon without the Master Sword. It's an awesome moment.

Honestly my biggest grievance with the story was just Zelda turning back into a human at the end . The memory scenes made such a big deal out of not being able to turn back and losing your conscious mind only for two ghosts to undo it with MaGiCaL pOwErS. It would be sad, yes, but either commit to it or don't.

TOTK's story just screams to me that it was something of an after thought. I get that the Zelda Team puts gameplay first as a priority for the development, but this is the largest internal development studio at Nintendo, with an enormous budget to work with, and the longest development time in Zelda's history... And this story was the best they could come up with? It's just sad that the most engaging part of the story for TOTK comes in the form of a trailer that released before the actual game ever released. Also thank you for bringing up how immersion breaking it can be have Link not react to anything. I can project myself onto a character that talks, reacts, and engages with characters around them. What I can't project myself onto is a character that has all the stage presence of a plank of wood.

Thank you for talking about just how great the presentation is in AoC. I'm so sad all the cutscenes we got with Master Kohga in this game had no voice acting, especially with how iconic he was in AoC. I personally feel like every returning actor in that game did a better performance than in BotW, so I guess they had much better voice direction. Even though the story in TotK sucks, if we had good performances, it could have at least made it more fun to sit through

I think the issue is in both BOTW and TOK is the focus on the story is always on the past. Nearly every cutscene or voice actor involved scene is in the flashbacks. BOTW on the dead champions and Zelda fretting over her powers. TOK about Zelda's experience in the past. The stuff happening in present day hyrule is paper thin. Link finds some mcguffins and goes after Ganon in the castle. I kind of get why- because Link is basically just a silent protagonist or a near silent protagonist so they made the focus of the story on Zelda and the Champions/Sages. But the problem is- none of them are around for present day hyrule stuff. So the story is basically already over by the time Link wakes up in both games. All that's left is killing Ganon. Its like if Lord of the Rings was a game, and the entirety of the game, you're playing as Frodo- already in Mordor and you get flashbacks to Aragon/Gandalf/Fellowship stuff in collectables you find. But all that's left is dropping the ring in the volcano.

its ironic that if you leave the master sword alone and get to the demon dragon without it you gain point D but lose point C.

Its funny you mention that you can find the memories out of order because i saw the “ganon at hyrule castle” scene before the “ganon sending molduga at hyrule” scene and thought that i was seeing it in order only for it to be the opposite and it made me take the story much less seriously once i knew this💀

Dungeon cutscenes are copy/paste of each other, and the content that should be done in a particular order doesn’t restrict you from doing out of order(even before reaching a dungeon), so you end up knowing a crucial piece of the story and every other character doesn’t get the message because link can’t tell them.

My hot take: the obvious solution to the Master Sword problem is something fans wouldn't like and Nintendo isn't brave enough to do: the Master Sword should not be accessible before the final battle. The Light Dragon should present it to Link during the climactic final confrontation with Ganondorf, which would A) check off every box on this list, B) prevent people from being spoiled by pulling it, and C) solve people's issue with the sword being underpowered compared to its narrative strength. Make it an endgame weapon that only unlocks once you've reached the end of the story. This prevents it from breaking the weapon-durability gameplay loop until the postgame and prevents it from being out of place in the narrative.

Age of Calamity is SERIOUSLY underrated. Even if you don't agree with the story itself, you can't deny the execution was PERFECT. I got chills multiple times throughout the course of the game.

To be honest, TOTK Master Sword pull was crazy good IMO

Age of calamity was the best warrior game I played. I grinded so much n such a great story n cast to play as.

i agree with you 100%! finally some validation. i thought i was crazy with the disappointments i had about totk's lore, story, storytelling, continuity, etc.

Glad I'm not the only one who's noticed these points about the story. I do have Age of Calamity, and I enjoyed every single bit of it's story. I know it's a "meh" story, but I THOROUGHLY enjoyed it and I kept wishing for more. One of the things it does very well is play to your emotional connection to the sages and other characters. Meanwhile, I literally couldn't care less about the sages in TOTK, and I don't care to remember them as people, but just as tools in the rare moments I do actually pull them out. And the horrible presentation in TOTK is why I get burned out of it in a way I never did with BOTW. BOTW story wasn't great but ironically, despite the world being more empty, it felt more alive. I still thoroughly enjoy TOTK for it's gameplay, but it manages to make me ask the question "do I really wanna keep playing?" after a while. BOTW just made me want to keep being in that world... and AoC straight up makes me wish there was more of it.

Although say what you want about age of calamity's story, it's actual cutscenes were incredible. It had some great fight scenes and great sequences in general such as the second last mission where every single race has united on Hyrule field. To this day when I play the final boss of aoc I get chills, with totk I get no chills

Despite the grandness of the final fight and Zelda's speech abt the Master Sword, the stakes felt sorely lacking. And every mention of Link trying desperately to find Zelda made it worse! Bro is completely expressionless! Absolutely no expression at all! Ever! (Zelda is only slightly more expressive, but I had it in a dif language so the VA might've done the leg work.) I just couldn't help but think "this wishes it was Skyward Sword" the entire time I was playing. They try to make such a big deal abt Link going to the ends of the earth to find Zelda, but it never actually feels like that.

glad to see another fan of AoC story that also think it's better than TotK's. although the story is not exactly a prequel and more like just another timeline split in the past, AoC's story is more connected to BotW than the supposed direct sequel. we don't really mind the champions got saved in that one, because they are good characters, unlike the old sages with the masks. it's even kind of insulting that they have the same voice actors with the champions imo... all in all, I hope in the next game they would do better at storytelling and more balanced just like you said. thanks for the video!

The whole game i was grilling my tv whenever purah started talking about Zelda. " I told you already, ZELDA IS A DRAGON!! Why wont anyone listen? Where's Impa?!!" Lol

I just wanted the Master Sword to be more special in utility than it was in BOTW. For all the hype of it getting broken, I assumed that it would be relevant to the game, like you having to do something to fix it. Instead it's essentially fixed before you even leave the tutorial and you just have to find it. So I thought "Okay, it's supposed to be stronger now, maybe it'll be better than the joke that it was in BOTW." Nope. Literally the same, except now since the thing that triggers the glowing effect (gloom-based enemies) is exclusive to the depths, it actually comes off worse than before. Not to mention fusing doesn't really do all that much to fix its durability issues. And they had the nerve to try to hide its damage output from you on top of that. Thanks to a glitch you can see that it's still 30, so not only is it the same as base BOTW's Master Sword, but it doesn't even get the neat buff it had in the DLC.

What would have been cool is if a previously difficult boss came in after getting the master sword, and the power of the master sword made it ridiculously easy, and then the devs could upscale the difficulty of the game afterwards

Not even Teba’s voice actor came back for totk, which I can’t believe! Just him grunting like everyone else, they really did him dirty there

I’ll never forgive Kohga not having his voice

regardless of how people felt about the master sword cutscene, i loved it just from the sheer badassery from it. like. you're pulling a legendary, demon-slaying sword blessed by the goddess herself out of the head of a FUCKING DRAGON'S HEAD

I really wanted to see more Sheikah tech and learn more into the Divine Beasts. To me, the fact the Zonai stuff replaces it makes me feel betrayed. And their official response is “they simply disappeared when the Calamity was beaten”?! Pathetic! BotW is iconic thanks to the Sheikah machines and such, something I think TotK should’ve kept. The Constructs in TotK are pathetic in comparison. But, yeah, I feel like this game is just reskinned BotW with no care put towards trying to make it feel like a sequel. All of it just pissed me off. I would have loved if they made the sequel more like AoC, including more into the Champions, their modern day selves becoming the next pilots and Ganon recognizing Link and Zelda from their fight with Calamity Ganon. But this game just failed on all of it.

I think a great way they could flesh out some plot lines is by making a Hyrule Warriors: Imprisoning War. In cutscenes and battles that take place in the past, we can learn more about Ganondorf, the Zonai, the ancient sages, and get to experience those battles. In the present, the story could focus on Link and his allies trying to end the criminal activities of the Yiga, find Kass, and who knows, maybe introduce followers of Ganondorf thought to have died in the Imprisoning War.

I had the absolute perfect story telling experience with this game. I happened upon all the memories nearly in their direct order. I learnt about Zelda turning into the Light Dragon the way the game intends, by you finding all the all the memories and watching the secret 13th one. Despite this I still had no idea you could ride on the Dragons in this game, so I never went up there to reclaim the master sword, and assumed it had to be acquired somewhere else. Much later, I save Korok Forest and the Great Deku Tree marks the location of the master sword on my map. To my surprise, the point was actively moving and I had no idea what it meant. Upon tracking down the dot, I see that it's none other than the Light Dragon. I get blasted into the sky and land on their back, in complete awe that I'm on the back of a dragon to begin with. I had already been spoiled about the Master Sword requiring stamina in this game instead of hearts so I had that ready and I begin the amazing master sword sequence, and getting Zelda's true final message. At that point I was more than ready to take on Ganon at Hyrule Castle, which turned out to just be a giant time waster but the trek of finding the fifth sage was way more impactful having seen all the memories and finding Mineru was more more heartfelt as if she was the final remnant of Zelda's will in the past clinging on. After all of that I was definitely more than ready to take on Ganon for real, the Dragon battle sequence is probably my favorite victory lap in any game ever. Zelda's sacrifice being undone with no effort kind of sucked. Typically you'd want your character to have lost something in the process of being given a second chance but Zelda both got to get back to the present, while fixing the Master Sword, without any consequence at all, she wasn't even vaguely conscious as the Light Dragon so it's not like the incomprehensible time she spent as it mattered it was nothing more than a dream to her. Which isn't even a new concept for her she spent a hundred years keeping Calamity Ganon at bay which I would assume she was more conscious for but even that didn't really phase her. And that kind of began to sour the other memories looking back. Even if Zelda didn't know this was a closed time loop situation she is still now directly responsible for literal millenniums of evil and misfortune at the hands of Calamity Ganon. Which is definitely not something the writers took into account at all. Or maybe they did, after all akin to how her dragon sacrifice mirrors her sacrifice in Botw, her being responsible for Ganon at all mirrors how her obsession with Sheikah Technology led to their entire kindgoms demise and the death of all her friends and loved ones. If the parallels are intentional which now I can't help but feel they are, that just makes this story worse. It's completely derivative of Breath of the Wild's, but worse in every possible way.

The phantom Ganon twist is also ruined if you did the spirit temple early. :(

I've got a bit to un pack here with this. Regarding how Tears handles finding visions vs Breath's memories. Talking to Purah and Josha, they'll point out the region of where the first geoglyph is and I'm pretty sure the order they recommended corresponds to the order of the geoglyph memories. Impa will be there and she'll talk about how to use the access the geoglyphs and the forgotten temple. In said temple, to see the order, all players need to do to figure out the order is match the pictures on the wall to where they are on the map replica. I picked it up better than finding one random painter who I might not assume is important and him pointing out places I haven't been to on based on pictures of random places. You can't miss Purah as she gives you the main quest all together. And only Impa knows how to use the geoglyphs. As for the content of the Tears visions vs Breaths memories. In Breath, the memories have the problem of Link being silent leading to awkward and limited converstations feeling expository dialogue with the people he interacts with. His reason for being silent is not in the memories. In Tears visions, it felt genuine and unlimited when Zelda is with other talking characters. I also felt less like was in the past but with a different perspective. Also the framing of restoring Links memory isn't important in the grand scheme of things like the mystery of Zelda's disappearance is. Sure we get context on why Link and the World state. But it never felt like we're learning anything that can help us. And when we do see the order of the memories, there are just as many gaps leading to more questions. Tears has gaps but it felt like all the important stuff was covered and answered that didn't require more questions. And only two memories refer back to previous ones. As for the twist, they had their cake and ate it too they had their take and ate it too they showed the dragon, and made the reveal either the master sword or the final tear which could be context as to why how she transformed. Its arguably not spoiling anything and the final tear could be the context. Regarding the sage writing vs the champions writing. While yes, the original champions and the backstory were fairly developed in Breath compared to the past sages. I'd argue Tears was right to focus on present day sages and make them more involved rather then focus on past ones that died before we met them because it didn't lead to dissonance between our involvement in the present vs our un involvement in the past like Breath did which Age of Calamity fixed. I didn't feel the past sages needed development. Also what we get in the present day aren't as formulaic as Breath's. The conflicts in regions are all the same in Botw. A divine beast threatens the region some way, go stop it with only the desert and Zora's domain showing for it. Tears conflicts are of the same source but different causes and effects that those regions suffering. And the map and music reflects it. Regarding Voice Actors. Them voicing characters in only in cutscenes and not in gameplay was supposed to be that way. We could look at the direct storytelling and focus on other parts of the game in Tears. Though I do wish the supporting characters had more cutscenes in them. Or that other characters in those cutscenes should've been voiced as well outside the visions. Though Christina's voice samples were in Hestu, when he danced. As for the new VA's they got. Also props for Chris, Cherami and Matt. And I don't know if Patricia's got better or if Zelda's grown, or if I'm more used to it but I felt it natural this time. Those are my counters.

I really wish the ancient sage cutscenes were more unique. The Lightning Sage is a gerudo for crying out loud! Doesn't she have any thoughts on the demon king being a gerudo? What pushed her to betray her leader? And why does Mineru not even care that Link has her brother's arm? Why is everyone so robotic? 😭 It's far cry from BotW where each Champion had a personality and a developped relationship with Link. All of their cutscenes were completely different from each other, which motivated you to complete the divine beasts.

This is a really well made video. You clearly took a lot of time crafting this and put a lot of thought into your script. While I may not agree with the majority of your arguments, I still appreciate the work you did to bring these thoughts forward. Well done.

what both BoTW and TotK have lacked for me, story-wise, is the sense of loss that earlier Zelda games had. Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess - all involve Link discovering that he must be the hero, but stepping into this destiny means the death of his previous life and who he was before. To me, this common theme is the spirit of Zelda is all about. I think that Link and the player knowing from the start that he is the Hero makes the story less engaging and immersive. The gameplay might not be linear anymore, but the plots are now much more linear than they used to be. Maybe it's because I'm in my thirties now, but I feel BoTW and TotK don't have the theme of lost childhood underpinning the plot that the earlier games did. I will always love the Zelda series for how it made me feel playing as a kid or teenager, but I think the magic of how the stories was told isn't there anymore. I don't know if I'd fall in love with Zelda if the open world games were my first experience of it.

The hype for the game was better than the game itself for me. I enjoyed a lot of the gameplay, discovering nwe locations and things, and zelda story in the past. But the rest was a little underwhelming. I miss the champions, kass, the guardians, a story that continued botw story without changing the past. But I guess I was misguided by my hype

Took the words out of my mouth. TOTK could have been great but.....

All valid points, and I agree with 98% of it. I actually liked AOCs effort way more than TOTK. I wished they marketed it better, but I digress. If they just give us DLC and connect dots I would be happier with TOTK.

The "story doesn't matter" defense I've seen from fanboys is ludicrous. They talk as if many Zelda fans didn't get into the series because of the lore!

Praying that Nintendo creates a HD, remaster, or Deluxe version of tears that they release that fixed the majority if not all these issues. Especially in the case that they release a new/update Nintendo console that can run more then 30 fps. I actually still like the game despite its story issues (possibly bc I was lucky and avoided the majority of glyph quests until all but the last two sages I had to complete). To me, them delaying the release from 2022 to 2023 was a sign to me that the company was trying to pressure the release from their own team. They have done fixes for some Zelda games when they made it playable on new consoles. Why not now??? Ik it's only been a year but even tho the game has received awards the fact that their lead creator had addressed the anger of the fandom (even if he was trying to convince ppl otherwise) means that the company heard them. They made Echos of wisdom, and I think that that would be one of the first games they make available for a new Switch console release. So why not do the same for TOTK and BOTW, but give them the proper game mechanic fixes?

Banditgames gives a very nice live stream regarding these last two instalments and it’s coming from a lifelong zelda fan too. His criticisms were very fair.

The thing I really liked about TOTK was the fact that (at least for me) the world felt so incredibly fresh and new despite having played BOTW. I REALLY loved the fact that I was able to go underground and into wells (when I accidentally fell into a well the first time, my brain exploded, lol). And I loved how the dungeons (despite how lacking they were) were a part of the landscape rather than something that felt separate to the overworld. However, yes, I would agree with a lot of points in the video. BOTW's story progression in an open world game made sense and I love how it create emotional connections with the characters ESPECIALLY zelda, but I still felt it lacking in gameplay and of course dungeon design. Although there were quite a few shrines in both games that had puzzles that were phenomenal and creative, I would just like to see them implemented in full on dungeons. And games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight princess left me yearning for the exploration and fun game mechanics we see in TOTK and the level of connection we feel with the characters in BOTW. But of course they more than made up for it in terms of story, dungeons/puzzles, and replayability (and the fact that they weren't as overwhelming, lol). All that to say that I think TOTK, BOTW, and past Zelda games each have something they lack in but excel in other areas. I hope that Aonuma and the team focus on balancing out all of these aspects one day to create the ultimate Zelda experience. And I truly think they will be able to achieve that.

13:28 yes it is, what are you talking about

What music is playing at 26:30 it sounds so familiar?

Look how bland and copy paste the divine beasts were in both BOTW and TOTK…. (Sorry to reference him again but i was just inspired to mention it because of something you said in the video: Banditgames did a great video recently that explains it way better than me

After trying to play the game properly and being disappointed once again by the overuse of flashbacks to see the story rather than experiencing it first hand and by lacking any items from Breath of the Wild such as Link's house, money, champion abilities, Sheikah abilities and the horse bike, I decided to simply item duplicate supplies to have enough strength to find and defeat Ganondorf without knowing where he was and that was fun in itself but such a hollow experience. I also did not like how so many NPC's did not recognize Link despite just being saved by Link not that long ago, it is such a middle finger from Nintendo. After finally finding Ganondorf's lair and having a hard time after reaching the silver lynel i kept on duplicating the essentials in the middle of battle and I gotta say seeing each boss for the first time since I skipped directly to Ganondorf it was a bit much, my biggest struggle was the water boss since I did not know how to damage it which I found stupid so I ended up looking it up and was disappointed once again on its stupid solution. Anyway, the Ganondorf fight was easy and lacked any substenance so all my six hour effort after getting off the skies was a waste of time. I played on Japanese so I did not suffer through the awful English voices, something i still do not understand as to why people play on English for any big major release.

Honestly i think this video convinced me that this game could use 2-3 DLC rather than 1(we are supposedly getting zero), as personally i maintain the game needs a MM with golden Lynels and other higher tier enemies/finish off the old weapon replication items for a DLC like the OG lynel maces for DLC 1. DLC 2 i would like to see a story with a Tear/quest componet for each ancient champion in the depths, like Champions ballad, but more for insight into their time with Rauru and perhaps some kind of armory reward after a quest in the depths like a legendary champion weapon ability, perhaps leading to the constructs openning a new GSI scale Island in the sky with high level challenges to upgrade the Hylian Shield or something?

I would add that there is no real character arc for Zelda or Link in this game either. In BOTW Zelda grew after she learned to open up and believe in herself which ended up saving the day. In TOTK Zelda "sacrifices" herself, but there was no real character growth by doing it because she never really grappled with the idea of self sacrifice.

That pretty much summed up my feelings for this game. I beat it and have no reason to go back to it. But I am on my 5th run of BOTW. :-P. I will say though that I didn't mind Zelda's character this time around, I like Sonia as a character and wished she had more time. But my biggest gripe is having Zelda turn back to normal at the end. When it was stated heavily that it is a one-way ticket and you can't change back. "Choices have consequences, Zelda! Link has the Master Sword but you remain a dragon forever!." A little play on Pagan Min's words to Ajay Ghale at the end of Far Cry 4.

Age of Calamity is so good, thank you for defending it :D

12:51 nintendo only *publishes* those series. Monolith and int systems have put a lot of effort into improving those aspects of their games over 20 years, while nintendo is just getting started. I think the main issue is that the people directing the voice actors and the writing team do not have as much communication as their subsidiaries' teams do. If there was the feedback of "this line is stilted and doesnt work" sent to the writing team and that kind of back and forth, maybe the story would have hit better

My main criticism about the ending was how the Sages were handled during the fight with Ganondorf and the Demon Dragon. Before TotK released, I was hoping that Link’s friends would directly fight Ganondorf alongside him, and when the ancient sages task the new sages to fight the Demon King, you can imagine how hyped I was to have this prediction come true. While I was grateful for the time I had with Link and the Sages fighting Ganondorf 6 on 1, I *was* disappointed when they got knocked out halfway through the only phase where they fight him directly. I would have preferred having the Sages continue to fight Ganondorf in the next part of his Demon King phase even if the phantoms are dealt with. If they’re defeated, just have Ganondorf restore his health. Even with the Sages, the third portion of the fight would still have been challenging. Alternatively, have him summon Hollows from Age of Calamity that take the form of the four sages (Tulin, Yunobo, Sidon, and Riju) and a dehydrated Phantom Ganon to keep the fives sages occupied, since it would be hard to take them out when Ganondorf starts attacking more aggressively. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the Sages were left in the Depths during the Demon Dragon fight. As amazing as the ending was with Ganondorf’s death, Zelda turning back into a hylian, and finally catching her was, the Sages being stuck in the Depths during all that was too distracting and sadly soured the ending for me. The developers could have handled that so much better by showing a cutscene of the Sages escaping the chasm, cheering Link on during the fight with the Demon Dragon, congratulating him as the Demon Dragon nears his end, and then (if you’ve awakened all five of them) rejoin with Link as he and Zelda gaze upon Hyrule Castle.

I didn’t even 100% TotK w/500 hrs into it. I immediately stopped playing with 1.2 update nerfing dupes. It is beyond insane that there is only 1 spawn point on the map for voltfish, and without duping I refuse to farm for materials to farm for more materials to farm Gleoks. I don’t even care to play it just to finish the game to see the ending……

Someone on the design team for "Breath of the Wild" I can't remember who said "We don't just want to do additive game design we want to do multiplicative game design where every feature must serve multiple purposes that play off of and effect each other." I think that philosophy not only carries the risk of having something be less than the sum of it's parts and their rigidity to stick to that philosophy kept a lot of good design from being implemented and the verity and contrast of the game suffers for it but more importantly they completely ignored this philosophy and fallowed it to a T in the worst possible way for the story not only is the story treated like a collectible in the world but it's also completely separate from your actions and that's not even getting into the quality of the story itself.

I’m all here for the AoC love

They were never ever NEVER EVER going to have a story where the bad guy kills everyone in the game except a handful. They were never going to have a game where the player "loses'; It is ridiculous to think otherwise. Age of Calamity gives the player a good "test" of what it was like through an alternative timeline- It really is a stroke a genius and shows how incredibly stupid we all were for expecting a 1:1 story.

I have some strong gripes on TOTK and its not so sequel feelinf, and how they completely ignored it's BotW connection. It doesnt feel like a sequel, it feels like a cheap remake, the gameplay and other stuff is good, but I dont like how the weapons feel like Im putting together animal parts all the time, and there is so much I dnt like about it. TOTK is awesome as a whole, but its bad in the story, like... really bad., and throws away a lot of the efforts of BotW. I can go on and on about how I feel about it.

the better game play improvement they coud have is make zelda and link duo game play character like in God of war

Collab with banditgames - he did one like this recently

I haven’t started the video yet as of typing this, I only saw the thumbnail and idk man, for me there were tears shed, quite alot totk isn’t the best zelda story but man it does have its shining moments

Totk should have been an expansion like Blood and Wine in Witcher 3, totk does not have much replay value, I completed it, I have not gone back to it ever since, BOTW however Ive played 3 times

As a Zelda fan since I was a kid this was the best and most emotional story in the series in my opinion I'll have to say TotK is my favorite game of all time

I really dont believe the game too 6 years. C word happen and might have delayed it for a few years. Second i dont see them ret🎉uring to the traditional way at all. Seeing as the last two have sold more copies then all the other games in the franchise combined. Things ill like to see is to take more risk with the story. Do the VA, cutscenes all of it. New villian give link a personality. Or if links a stand in for us allow us to dialogs option to imprint or personality. Heck even let us play as zelda or that girl link from hyrule warriors. Lets really take risk

I AM YOUR ANCESTOR FROM A TIME LONG PAST!

13:42 also omega force made age of calamity, and they have tons more experience than nintendo. Not defending them, but it is true

I genuinely feel that they did not care about major aspects of this game because they simply focused too much on the new mechanics. This game is BOTW but bloated, which is why I dropped this game and never finished it. It has an overwhelming amount of content, but it’s all underwhelming when experienced. I fucked myself when doing the story beats, like I genuinely got the story in such an order where I was like yeah this is bad. When I got to the dungeons and finished them I just stopped playing, I got to the spirit dungeon side quest and das about it.

Been playing Genshin impact since launch my one critique with TOTK is no voices for half the games quest side quest and adventure quest

My hot take is that even the exclusively portable LoZ games are better than tears of the kingdom, they went out of their way to invent their own worlds and still comfortably tied in the most obvious lore as if it belonged there to begin with, but tears of the kingdom fails because it relies too much on copy & paste without the forethought of grounding anything.

The cdi games had better continuity

The landscape is not the same. it's about 50% different. it's hard to notice the difference until you start toggle between BOTW and TOTK then you an see the difference. I like the game, i just wish there was more to do in the sky islands

I just had the weirdest thought that absolutely would not work, but wouldn’t it be funny if Link used his age of calamity fighting style when he got the master sword back?

This game sounds like Minecraft but no real story that’s not good.

I get the points you made and agree with them, but no the conclusion, even with this issues the game still holds itself as a better and more complete version of BOTW, and together they can be seen as a bigger game played in two parts

This was a really fantastic watch. personally, I like TotK, and I've been disheartened by how a lot of Zeldatube has pivoted to complaining about TotK instead of actually discussing it. This video really excellently lays out the issues of the game ITSELF, and EXPLAINS your reasoning, without making it about inconsequential minor lore gripes or overhyped expectations.

I disagreed with everything you said against tears

To me, full dialogue in Zelda feel weird.

The scenario of Tears of the Kingdom is an investigation in which Link must find Zelda. Link will have to collect clues to link them together and get an idea of where or how to find her. This can happen at any time if the player has found the solution. So having the tears/memories in a different order is part of the basic intention, which is totally in line with the game's philosophy: to leave the keys to the player to lead his adventure as he wishes. The player can just as easily discover all this without even having discovered a single tear. Whether you like it or not, it's not the game's problem, but the problem of players who don't like this approach. I'm sorry for those who don't like it, but I loved it, as well as finding it totally coherent and, in my memory, unique for an open-world action/adventure game. The problem lies here, in my opinion: it's a totally new approach and therefore difficult to grasp. Even in games that claim to be open-ended, we're used to following a story told in the classic way.

So much of the story and game design was just lazy. 6 years for this?

I swear you people are getting paid by Sony or something to bash this game. Tooo many people are complaining about a game that you all complained about taking too long to release.

such a well made video its a shame your points are highly disagreeable

Story was trash. As was the whole game. I can’t believe wind waker was developed from the ground up in 2 years whereas Tears of the Kingdom reusing the same assets took 6 and it’s WORSE than wind waker 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

You got many good points... but just saying that SpiderWoke 2 is replayable or even saying is a “good” “game”... make you loose all your good points... 😑👎🏼 and credibility.

By far the worst part of the story is the fact that Zelda gets turned into a dragon. No matter the delivery, dumbest plot ever.

Dude you’re overthinking this game. It’s a great game. It’s full of exploration and story. You all spent countless hours playing. No one cares about voice acting.

So, hearing from your conclusion, I can’t call Tears of the Kingdom an experience because of a strangers disappointment with a story? I was rather in love with the story. Because even though it may be basic, a timeless story is still timeless.