I’m not going to deny that they are good games, they definitely are. However, there are some design choices made with BOTW and TOTK that really make me separate them from the rest of the series.
The item degradation, the voice acting, the open worldness, all these things aren’t what I want from a Zelda, and because of that, I doubt I’ll ever replay those games again. Again, not bad games at all, and if anyone said they were their favorite games, I’d totally understand that.
But does anyone else wish that we would get a more traditional Zelda game again?
When people say ‘traditional’, it’s very possible you’re only referring to a style of Zelda game that only started with N64’s Ocarina of Time. It was back then a change of pace for adventures that were sometimes too cryptic to decipher, or too difficult, for younger players.
Nintendo definitely spent a lot of the GameCube/Wii era trying to repeat the main appeal of that game; but most people I know still just enjoyed Ocarina more than the others. Even Majora’s Mask tried to take side roads with their time limit system to set itself apart.
So it does feel a bit like people constantly demand a “new Zelda just like the old ones” when the purpose of the old ones was to fulfill some new fantasy people hadn’t experienced. The ones that established themselves as “Ocarina of Time 2 / 3” just didn’t feel as notable. That practice of committing to new concepts does, by necessity, mean leaving some people with a poor taste in their mouths. I didn’t even feel that excited about Wind Waker back when it came out and popularized cel shaded art styles.
Idk about that. OoT was a 3D adaptation of the 2D Zelda formula. The fundamental Zelda formula has changed very little since A Link to the Past.
My idea of the “Zelda Formula” is a structured metroidvania where each “dungeon” is basically a mini metroidvania centered around one item, and the path between dungeons is usually more story driven. Occasionally there are items and puzzles between dungeons as well.
IMO the only Zelda games that don’t really follow the formula are:
- The Legend of Zelda (follows it loosely)
- Zelda II (follows it very loosely)
- A Link Between Worlds (kinda follows it but discards key aspects of it)
- The multiplayer entries (Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures, Triforce Heros) (kinda follow it but discard key aspects of it)
- Breath of the Wild
- Tears of the Kingdom (follows it very loosely)
Really the only thing I wish would go the hell away is item durability. It makes the rewards for things less cool. Like, oh look I did this long ass chain of fetch quests and got a beautiful sword that’s a reference to a past game; better make the most of it before it fucking explodes. Get outta here with that.
I do wish the world was more open. I despise huge walls and climbing. Especially when explosives are abundant. We invented dynamite specifically to not have to deal with huge fucking cliffs everywhere; let’s use some bomb flowers and really open shit up.
Item durability really is the biggest gripe I have, for the exact same reasons you said. It feels less exciting to get an item.
On that note, I love Breath of the Wild. I thought it was a great game. While I do also very much enjoy Tears of the Kingdom, I am endlessly frustrated with the unclimbable walls in the depths. I get so frustrated that I have to put down the game.
Oh those can fuck right off. Especially because you absolutely can climb them. You can waste lots of time and stamina and resources climbing them. You just can’t fucking get anywhere because the ceiling is an invisible wall.
Oh yeah. Those can also fuck right off.
Why don’t you just look at the map and go around?
I haven’t gotten enough of the lightroots to see much of anything as far as the underground map goes. I’m trying but it’s hard to get around with all the walls. Not being able to get around the walls is the main thing preventing me from getting more lightroots.
You can predict where the walls are going to be if you compare the depths map with the surface map and look for patterns.
I don’t think your opinion is as unpopular as you think. In the zelda discussions I frequent, this is a reoccuring opinion, especially from long time fans.
In my opinion, the last 2 Zeldas sacrifice a well designed linearity for freedom at every turn. The games offer so many different approaches to playing, that in their entirety, they feel completely different. However, depending on your playstyle, this freedom can fall flat. Once you figure out how to solve a certain challenge, you can adopt this and keep using the same solution for the next 100 times this challenge is thrown at you, OR you can force yourself to creatively come up with a new solution. Some gamers really like optimizing how they play and “powergame” and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Once they figure out the optimal strat for anything, the games become boring and monotonous to them, as they are more interested in solving the challenge in front of them, than in messing around with different approaches. This happened to me when I was playing Breath of the Wild.
With Tears of the Kingdom, I thankfully managed to avoid that trap and keep myself entertained for longer, but I can definitely see how one could have the same thing happen again: Find optimal strat -> Use it everywhere -> get bored with how monotonous the game is.
While this freedom approach offers a lot of new things, it fails to statisfy the same itch, that a traditionally designed zelda game would with it’s plentiful dungeons. Yes, the physics puzzles are great and the creative approaches offer a lot of various solutions to the same thing, but they aren’t a SS Ancient Basin or a TP Snowpeak Ruins.
Too much freedom can be a bad thing for games. Think about how many open world games there are, it’s overdone. The older Zelda’s had an openness to them, but with restrictions, and I think that was it’s golden formula.
I understand that desire a lot!
I do miss traditional dungeons, but as a person who likes playing a ton of different games and genres, I think TOTK (far more than BOTW) really does some incredible things with it’s systems and really invites true creativity. I think, overall, that outshines the very enjoyable, but linear approach of the older games.
I would love a next gen, classically dungeon based Zelda game too, but I think that if one of the older Zelda games came out today (skyward sword, ocarina, wind waker, etc) it simply wouldn’t have the universally fun pull of BOTW or TOTK.
They have big issues, yeah. But they are doing more to advance gaming as a whole by a huge amount and I can’t help but appreciate them.
I wish we could just get a solid legal version of Majora’s mask (and most of the games on the online section). The input lag and polish on the N64 online games is so bad. Mario Cart is unplayable unless you enjoy trying to predictively turn to account for the input delay.
Maybe I can’t answer your question because I haven’t played them… Yet.
But I also feel them like almost a different franchise altogether.
I remember once I read this was like the technological evolution of Zelda as of today, meaning this is what the Zelda experience must to be for today’s standards, as revolutionary as the first TLOZ was or OOT in their age and time.
I couldn’t relate with this feeling completely because I never played them on their current time lol.
The only games I have played are the following in this order:
Phantom Hourglass (good entry I think)
Twilight Princess (edgy)
Ocarina of Time (timeless (?))
Majora’s Mask (my favorite)
A Link To The Past (hard as balls to me)
And I definitely have the new games on my sight, it doesn’t help that my gf insists and insists that I play them lol.
But they feel very different for me already, but I don’t think that’s necessarily bad, maybe they can coexists wether Nintendo remaking old stuff or creating smaller experiences for the older fans, handhelds used to have this spot, and I don’t think next consoles are not going to be hybrid tbh, only time will tell how Zelda games evolve.
A Link to the Past was and still is my favorite Zelda game.
The voice acting was by far the worst part. By a long shot. After that it’s the lack of traditional dungeons or memorable music. I’m not a huge fan of the new games really, but they are fun to dink around in
I miss the old dungeons as well. It was one of my favorite parts of the game.
My favourite zelda was the one on the Snes, then wind waker. And I love botw. Played it day 1 for hundreds of hours on a wiiu, then transferred my save to pc for 4k60 goodness. Loved it. Not enough to get all koroks, but enough to get like two thirds of them. But I was in love with the environment. And those cool as hell dragons. And the atmospheric sound and music. And the little bite size shrines. And the chasing star fragments and pointless armour upgrading.
But for reasons I cannot explain, I bounced off totk in about an hour and have no desire to return. Opening with the shitty story didn’t help. Following up with a crafting system didn’t help me much either. The environment feeling like part of the same map too, did not help. But none of that feels like a proper reason 🤷♂️
I wasn’t yet alive when SNES Zelda was new, so I didn’t grow up with, but I would still consider it a “traditional Zelda” just like I consider ocarina and majora, and wind waker, twilight, to be “traditional”.
Change can be good, but to me, the changes in the new Zelda games are huge and divisive. Sometimes it seems like it took pages from other companies open world games, and lost some of the magic it had.
Or maybe I’m just getting old and bitter lol.
Majora as traditional is a spicy take and I love it
Haha ok, true. It’s my favorite, guilty bias on my part. I feel like it wasn’t too much of a change from Ocarina though.
Having a built in time limit precludes it from being a “traditional” Zelda, in my opinion. Not that that’s bad, necessarily, but it’s the only one like that.
@frozen @GreenCrush but the time limit is only a facade. Being able to freely move back and forth in time kind of negates the time limit, no? You get the ability to do so very early game
I wasn’t yet alive when SNES Zelda was new
And
Or maybe I’m just getting old and bitter lol
That’s an interesting combination there. Time for me to turn into dust and mold 👴🏻💀👻
But seriously, this shows that what anything is, definitively, changes over time. Nostalgia not only cling to the past, not only cling to a singularly myopic version of the past, but actually clings to a version of the past that never truly existed.
Ha fair point.
Same here, loved Link to the past, one of my first games. It’s, together with Super mario world, the game i replayed most times.
Didn’t jump on the n64 train so I missed all games that still are considered master pieces. I don’t care for them and does not share the love for them as most of gaming media portraits 3d gaming revolution.
Got old enough to both own a ps2 and GameCube and completely fell in love in Windwaker, the graphics, the feeling of world exploring, fishing for treasures, hooked it up with my Gameboy advance sp.
But it was not well received by the community so twilight princess was an complete disappointment for me when Nintendo returned to well proven n64 format. I never completed the game
I’ve tried Zelda skyward swords, it seemed promising but I hated the motion controls sooo much to the level I though it ruined the game.
I finally returned to nintendo after buying a switch last year and off course together with breath of the wild. Loved the world building and graphics, but the open world game play does not suit me, where I can run into overpowered enemies by accident and the worst game decisions to add breakable equipment… When finishing the end boss I felt I hadn’t completed the game but I didn’t care to go back and grind myself thorough endless battels to do what…
With tears of the kingdom I read that the creators had put more focus on open world concepts with creation tools and adhooks to enhance capabilities of weapons etc which isn’t my cup of tea.
Im missing the cosy feeling I got from link to the past and wind waker, BOTW was close, but my fond memory may be an illusion since Wind waker only been re-realsed for Wii U… I was certain it would have been released for the switch when I bought it but yet that hope is fading away.
The Skyward Sword port on the switch has very little motion control, for whatever it’s worth. I felt like it scratched the coziness itch BotW/TotK lack somewhat.
I didn’t even bother to play them. Happy that a new generation loves them though, and the sales figures speak for themselves. We’re probably not getting classic Zelda back for a long time.
Link Between Worlds and the Links Awakening remake count, though. If you haven’t checked those out they are both great.
I didn’t care much for BOTW, but TOTK is freakin"’ awesome.
The only disappointment I have with TOTK is really just a lack of traditional bosses and power acquisition. But it is still pretty good and way better than BOTW.
It’s right there with Link to the Past and Wind Waker for me.
I played both, definitely more of BOTW on my Wii U. But I guess because TOTK is more like an asset-flip, I was less excited to get into it than when BOTW came out.
Wind waker chef’s kiss perfect.
I didn’t care for BOTW and didn’t buy TOTK. Too different for me and breakable weapons with no way to repair? Get outta here…
BOTW was my first Zelda game. I hated the item degradation, but everything else about the game was so good that I eventually got over that
Yes, hella good games - didn’t scratch the Zelda itch though.
There was one point in totk where I fell down a well, bombed a wall, and found a fairy fountain, and suddenly I felt it for a fleeting second. But that was about it. The dungeons were an absolute joke in terms of length and difficulty.
I also managed to break a LOT of puzzles (like straight up skip them) by lifting a piece of something up high with ultrahand, dropping it, hopping on it, then recalling it up. I think the game would have been better if recall just didn’t exist.
I hated BOTW but love TOTK. I think the expanded world, new mechanics, and story make it really fun.
Links Awakening (GB) is my comfort food though, I’ve always considered top-down Zelda games to be the best ones. Idk why but the lack of a jump button in older 3D Zeldas always screws me up.
BotW was my first Zelda and a gateway drug. I didn’t really enjoy TotK as it was too much of a sandbox. I preferred the creative ways you were forced to use your limited abilities in BotW. Then I played Twilight Princess HD and was at first disappointed at how linear it was but later absolutely loved the story and characters (it took the first spot for me). I guess I did myself a disservice by playing TP so early because I’m playing other Zeldas now and I’m still searching for that type of experience knowing that it may probably not be reproduced.
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