Tears of the Kingdom – First Impressions (A BotW Hater's First Playthrough)



Every dislike feeds a hungry child! ;D

Tears of the Kingdom… Eh? It’s an improvement here, a step back or three there… It’s just bringing BotW up to standard and is that really a good thing?

Also, have a free book we wrote! https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/55970/dhanurana

I hope in watching this you can see some of the issues in this game, learn something, and maybe have some fun along the way. Thank you all for clicking this and spending some time watching the videos I want to make and I hope you have a great day!

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Textbook Links – (Any non specifically cited information from any textbook is either paraphrasing or summarizing information/sentiments throughout the text. If there’s anything someone would like specifically cited, let me know.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FobuFpCUz9qp4arZTi0ndwfJJ3HT-huBKtaCF-6c8Xk/edit?usp=sharing

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I only own, like, the stick figures I drew and any pictures or music or video I used that I don’t specifically own was used just to make a quick point or because I simply don’t have the time or ability to get the footage otherwise and I don’t claim anything except like, those stick figures and some game footage.

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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:56 Here we go!!
09:37 Formula… WHY??
18:41 Down we go
20:46 Go out on a high!

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#zelda #totk #tearsofthekingdom

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47 thoughts on “Tears of the Kingdom – First Impressions (A BotW Hater's First Playthrough)”

  1. Excited to see this.
    Edit: having watched it, I'd like to see you do an in depth analysis of the game like you did for botw. I'd also love to see more content like that in general.

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  2. Haven't finished watching it but tbh I kinda agree. They seemed to focus more on the gameplay which is good, that's what a game is made out of but I kinda wanted the story too. I don't like all the introductions either but this was meant to be played without having to play BotW so it's… a pass… but it still feels weird to have the side quest characters just get global amnesia. Also I personally like that Link is completely mute, but he could definitely emote/react more (if we wanna defend even more we could say he's just devoted to being a full on knight that's a doormat). Another thing, the biggest disappointment? The shrines, I heard they have much better puzzles but they still look exactly the same, which I was hoping would be fixed like the boss designs. Maybe it makes sense in the lore, idk.

    I think it's still good, but those few things are kind of too noticeable, so close yet so far…

    (Also this keeps bothering me, how can we have Rauru's hand if he's a ghost? Like… his body is gone, yet we have a part of it- I-, I hate it, it's probably just magic but I hate it.)

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  3. Considering TotK's set up and how non-impactful the events of BotW were, I wonder how unimportant/skippable BotW is if I blotted it out of my memory. Like even without the first game, everyone in Hyrule would know about Link, Hyrule's master knight, so he doesn't really NEED an introduction. If nobody mentions what happened in the last game, even the returning characters could be like "Hey you're Zelda's knight, nice to see you again," and just go on. Then the story just becomes "Link and Zelda (in the year of who gives a fuck) explore a cave, find Ganondorf, and Link does what he always does."

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  4. Why would you make a sequel and not even try to address any of the main criticisms of the previous game (durability, shrines and dungeons)?

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  5. I don’t want a playable Zelda. I think if they want to do that they should start a spinoff starring her. I don’t want to be forced to play as a character other than Link. I didn’t even like her in botw. Link is the hero of this series. Zelda isn’t a warrior at all, she has powers yes, but she is a princess or a Queen now like you stated, and a budding scientist if anything. I would be all for having her play a larger role in the story if it was done well.
    There isn’t anything wrong with being feminine or needing to be saved. The whole girl boss trope is so overdone in every piece of media now. Not every female needs to be masculine and kicking ass. It’s ok to be a feminine female. Zelda is powerful in ways Link is not.
    A lot of these legacy games have male heroes because at the time of their creation most gamers were male, a majority still are.
    I have nothing against a female protagonist, Metroid is one of my favorite series. I don’t think this series needs two protagonists, female or not.
    When I say this the main response I get is “but …but her name is in the title!” To that I say- so what? In Metroid you don’t play as a Metroid. Zelda is just a nice strong feminine name they chose because they liked it. Plenty of series have names other than the protagonist’s.
    We’ll see though, I’m not very far either and I have avoided spoilers so it might happen still (playable Zelda.) I’d definitely love to see a follow up to this once you get a little further. It’s nice to hear something besides the endless gushing most game channels are doing. I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far. I’m still not convinced this format needs to be the new direction of the series. Though it seems that may be the case.

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  6. You know, if I didn't get a copy of this for free because of a sweepstakes, I probably wouldn't play it. At least if I don't like it, I can't say it was a waste of money I suppose.

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  7. tears makes me think now botw was completely unnecessary. this game is definitely better, has more classic zelda vibes with the bosses, enemies and dungeons even if they divine beasts 2.0. not a masterpiece but i was definitely wrong thinking it would be a disaster. also more mini bosses is really nice. All im really upset with is koroks still being in so far. also feel bad for anyone playing on switch, the framerate is horrible.

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  8. Im glad you're still working on videos. At this point fam, just treat it as a hobby. Perhaps one day you'll get popular. Hell make smaller videos and work your way up. Try to understand how to play the game thats YT.

    I believe in you!

    Also ToTK makes BOTW invalid because it feels like a tech demo in comparison.

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  9. Between Age of Calamity being terrible (why is link so easy to play as if it was supposed to be a "tale of the campions" and attack speed is, well attack speed) and whatever the evil world TOTK is supposed to be, my trust for Nintendo has been struck with an ancient arrow. I'm seriously thinking about stopping supporting them barring kirby. Are there any good linear PlayStation or Xbox games with stories?

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  10. Honestly, that 10-minute long sequence at the beginning feels like massive troll move from Nintendo. "Oh, you thought this game is going to be more story-driven with Zelda playing an active role in the plot? LOL. Go collect the flashbacks, flashback collector.

    That plain white text at the beginning does feel weirdly pretentious for Nintendo. So out-of-place.

    4:54 To be fair, having zero clipping in 3D games is basically impossible, it's going to happen. But it SHOULDN'T happen to the default weapon when the protagonist is just standing on a flat surface! 😛

    Man, this Zelda feels soooo bland compared to other versions of her character in 3D games.

    7:05 Yeah, Horizon did this better. Both at the beginning of Zero Dawn where child Aloy discovers a Focus for the first time and at the beginning of Forbidden West where she explains it to Varl who also didn't use it prior.

    The into sequence reminds me of the Catacombs from Dragon's Dogma.

    There's really no excuse for the lack of voice acting anymore. It's 2023. And Nintendo is a $50 billion video game company. This is something other companies have mastered over 20 years ago. I think the last major, non-indie, non-Nintendo game without voice acting was Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. A curious coincidence that TotK also has car-building mechanics.

    9:55 I know why Link's underwear survived. Because no one (normal) wants to see his PP. 😛

    I seriously have to question certain elements of the physics engine. Isn't the whole point of physics to be more realistic? So sticking a big boulder to the tip of a sword REALLY shouldn't work properly. Link should be unable to use it. The sword should bend or snap under all that weight. And you can still caress big enemies with a floating rock and that damages them somehow. Pretty sure that rock has the weight of an inflated balloon when it levitates like that. I mean, look at Half-life 2 – you couldn't kill enemies by gently touching them with a rock or a barrel. You had to LAUNCH them at the enemies. With actual velocity. You know – physics! 😛

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  11. Tok feels like a marginal improvement from Botw. Nothing has really changed. So many legitimate complaints have been ignored. Sgo if I don't think Botw is a 10/10 then this certainly isn't either. I miss traditional Zelda so much.

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  12. Zeldas voice acting is so bad. I honestly hate the way she sounds. Her tone is empty and the way she speaks is too proper. Literally zero characterization in her tone.

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  13. This truly is Botw 2.
    Double the potential, double the dissapointment xD
    No but seriously, I totally agree with the characters being really bland. Zelda games used to be colorful, even link was actually reacting to the world. It's sad to see such uninspired characters and performances.

    And those framerate drops, sweet jesus… If BoTW was a tech demo, this seems more like a beta.

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  14. I know the day you released this idubbbz kinda trounced recommendeds, idk if it’ll affect viewer ship but if it does it’s not your fault Orion. We love your content and wanna see more, try to hold onto everything as long as you can, man. We believe in you! ^^

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  15. If you don't like Breath of The Wild, you're not really going to like the better Breath of The Wild that's all the cut content they didn't put into the first game. I don't really have much to say here, as a big lore guy I was also extremely disappointed in the opening. Everybody was stupid, except for Ganondorf. Somehow everybody forgot Ganondorf existed, but he knows everyone by name. Somehow this lore dump is huge news, except 95% of it we already knew and, more importantly, ZELDA already knew, so it's not as amazing as she makes it out to be. I liked the idea of the Zonai, and am even open to them being a major part of why Hyrule exists, but I feel like making the royal line mixed race hybrids with them is weird and just destroys Skyward Sword. Which is even stranger a decision when you realize how much of SS the background of Breath of The Wild relied upon.

    The only thing I'll point out that I really disagree with you on is your confusion about why the Great Plateau-esque location needs to exist. Mechanically, it has to. The oldest Zelda games had no direction you had to go. It was like early Dark Souls in that regard. You can pick a direction and find trouble. You may even find yourself in a location you don't have the tools to solve. You might find a tool in a dungeon that's not even used in that dungeon, but is needed to kill some other boss elsewhere. As time progressed, they moved away from that, into a more rote and on-rails style experience. You visit dungeons in order, you get the tool you need to solve a dungeon in the dungeon it's needed. Ect. People have complained about this, and to their credit, Nintendo has begun to correct it, they are experimenting with new things. However, with a game like BotW/TotK, you really need to give players all of the tools up-front, because so many puzzles everywhere rely on all of the tools existing in your arsenal. So the sprawling go-here-solve-puzzle-get-power tutorial area exists as a mechanism to deliver the physics puzzle powers to the player before cutting them loose. It's a sort of compromise between the oldest Zelda games and the rote formula of the newer ones. You don't collect powers as you go, and you don't explore blindly and eventually stumble onto what you're looking for, either. They give you everything important up-front. That's why it exists.

    Now, is that a GOOD system? Debatable. I think presentation matters. I also think Nintendo is underestimating the players to an extent, and believe they probably could have just given us Ultrahand and a pat on the head and let us find the rest out in the wild, old-school style. But it is 'A' solution to a long-running Zelda problem. Perhaps not the best solution, but a solution none-the less.

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  16. Also, I think a lot of the problems Tears has comes from the problem that it assumes the player has played Wild, but it also can't TRULY assume that, because what if they haven't? So you get a weird mish-mash of WELL AS YOU KNOW recaps combined with gaps where they just assume you'll know how to do X. This is a problem with splitting a game in half like this. You can't avoid the BUT THOU MUST and AS YOU KNOW bits, you have to have them, but they're just obnoxious. Meanwhile, the hypothetical new player is screwed over, because if you never played Breath of The Wild, how would you think to go check where Link woke up the first time to see if anything important is there (because something is)? A new player wouldn't know about that. They could miss it entirely. Breaking the game in half causes problems that wouldn't have existed if this had been one really big game. I suspect that's probably why the sky island feels so phoned-in. It wasn't originally there at all in the storyboard.

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  17. After playing long enough to finish the first dungeon, I definitely have to agree with everything that you’ve said.

    Seeing as how I’ve gotten further than you as of this video, however, I will add that I think that once you get past the tutorial island this is a pretty substantial improvement over BotW in some ways, with some very noticeable negative changes in others. Some of the changes actually have pleasantly surprised me, while others have just made things worse. I’m actually kind of excited to see how things go if only out of morbid curiosity.

    Also just as an update, I’m still working on my video. I finished the script and even recorded it, but I messed up parts of the recording and need to redo them. I am pausing it for a few days because of some things going on with family and friends (all positive, don’t worry) as well as the obvious new game taking up some time, but I’m still dedicated to pumping this out and even have some ideas for more videos later.

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  18. I've played a number of hours, done the first "dungeon" and meh is the right word. All the stuff from previous Zelda games that I would have liked to see return, didn't. But on the flip side traversing the map is a lot less boring with the new vehicles you can make.

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  19. Text boxes completely ruin the immersion, why have voice actors to only use them for 10% of dialogue? I also think the AI on NPCs are N64 level, please do a commentary on the terrible NPC AI there’s a lot of meat there. Great analysis!

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  20. Orion C – Enjoy the game for what it is and move on, but I guess in your case you won't. If you're unhappy, go make your own game, which you won't do. I think it's great game as well as BOTW.

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  21. I kinda liked the Great Sky Island actually (I was for some reason never a big fan of the Great Plateau, felt like a slog), I like the powers and the Zonai devices. The weapon fusing wore off real quick and it's a pain in the ass, and a lame solution to the trash weapon durability system. The cooking is still bad, I dislike the narrating, the characters, the Koroks. I still haven't gotten the paraglider, which has made my experience more than frustrating. Shrines improved. And oh god the enemy variety. Why would I ever fight an enemy? Is it even interesting or rewarding?? That's it, done sharing.

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  22. I beat the game because I wanted to sample every dungeon because that's what counts. That shit sucked dong. Worst dungeons of any zelda game aside from botw

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  23. There's stuff to be enjoyed, but considering that the melee combat is just reused here, only with even worse boring pacingness added by stealing twilight princess' dramatic pause frames, they've just made a shiny, polished turd. Arrows are still the way to go, and it almost seems like they knew this for TotK considering how much they do a good job of replenishing arrows without you trying, and the emphasis on giving materials actual purpose beyond just another plaything to collect and then either sell, keep perpetually in the inventory, or toss.

    What they did with melee weapons is… cute; it's clear they're trying to encourage use of Fuse more than ever; and they actually fixed the weapon breaking by… reducing the value of everything to near-zero… but once again, the shiny toid of a melee combat system is neither fun nor satisfying in any way whatsoever, so they've just made me averse to combat altogether unless I'm in a cave.

    They did at least fix enemy diversity… and even brought in some old friends… enemies rather… and some new ones too!

    So far, I'm disappointed about fuse. Either I'm not far enough into the game to appreciate it, or they've actually screwed it up. I'm still left wondering what the point of building anything is… if it's all disposable! What's the point of spending what admittedly takes a considerable amount of time coming up with some solutions and contraptions and putting things together… only to leave them behind!? Gee, would be nice if, instead of gumball machines, we got some sort of construct transport system that permits taking whole machines with you! Even if it were limited to just one, I would be just fine and happy, but no, you get disposable gumballs of parts. Literally a pointless gimmick this far into the game (which isn't very far admittedly, but far enough to have some decent experience with it), but here's to hoping there's light at the end of the tunnel question mark? I sincerely hope so. I sincerely hope there's a new item I've yet to come across that permits this in some fashion, even just a little. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T MAKE AND TAKE MY MAGNIFICENT FLYING MACHINE WITH ME AND WILL DESPAWN SOON?!?!?!

    And yes. I nearly found out the hard way that they do not in fact put any amount of impassable caution tape around anything, not even the Hyrule chasm that presumably leads to the end of the game because I went so deep that the game told me I couldn't teleport out with everything covered in gloom, and something oddly reminiscent of the previous game… no spoilers! Still, again, the music design is fenomenal tho, and–no spoilers–they fixed the calamity-ravaged (now gloom-ravaged) regions! I legit was wondering whether or not, in the first region I went to, everyone had died save for a few… both because of what I saw; the events happening; and the absolutely anxiety-inducing background music.

    There is yet hope! Alas, expect plenty of stinkers besides what I've just mentioned, including in the Depths. One would think they would've learned the errors of their ways and expanded on the pitch-black levels from the BotW master sword DLC. One would think wrongly.

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  24. Looks like my wish came true! Although it’s just first impressions, I am loving your reactions already. I did every shrine and beat the final boss so I’m stoked to see your thoughts on the rest of the game. I wonder how you will react to the vehicle building and the Depths area? I enjoyed the “gameplay loop” in TOTK so if you bring that up again I’ll disagree. 🙂

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