As in go to the castle to fight the final battle. After hours of running around questing and occasionally just exploring aimlessly, I feel like that capstone ends the fun. Anyone else do this?
I haven’t beaten BOTW either despite having it for years.
I may never make it to TOTK.
I am going to get to a point where I just to back to botw for the gameplay lol.
I totally agree. Both are of the few games where the journey actually is better without a destination.
Though I will say going straight to the boss at the start of a new game is also fun as hell and the reward for winning is sweet (the satisfaction of completing the challenge feels super good, I mean).
I really enjoy both games and I finished BOTW, but something happened during TOTK. I was more than ready for the final fight, but I kept getting distracted by side quests in the game and in real life. It’s been over a year maybe 2 years now (because time flies).
For christmas, my youngest asked me to please finish the game for him. So I pick it up and I started playing again. I was proximate to one of the last, maybe the last, fights with Master Kohga, so I gave it to go. It was the stupidest battle because I clearly forgot how to play. I eventually had to unload a stupid number of arrows to just beat him without getting too badly hurt. I’m a resource hog, so I was frustrated to waste so many resources on a fight that should have been so much easier for me.
I have totally forgotten every mechanism and there is no way I’m ready for the final fight. Heck, I’ve forgotten most of the lore now. 😭
So I played for a couple of hours which made him happy, but he still very very regularly begs me to finish the dang game.
Now I see this. Ugh. 😅 🤦🏽
This is so funny because my kids have been doing the same thing. Why won’t I just go to the next checkpoint? To them it’s nuts.
The bane of adult responsibilities. Never allowing us to just play play play all time time. 😁
Perhaps you and I need to make a gaming pact to force ourselves to actually finish? 🙃
Seriously, why did I invest all those hours only to leave an excellent game unfinished!? 🤦🏽
I played both and purposefully avoided the final in totk until I “did everything” after accidentally beating botw prematurely… which was very disappointing. The game is better than its abrupt end.
it mirrors the original in that as soon as you beat Gannon, credits roll.
this feels weird in an open world. it would have benefited from altering npc responses and other minor tweaks encouraging continued game play post-gannon in a world obviously designed for it.
Yeah these games are definitely about the journey, not the destination. The journey is awesome, but I was also super underwhelmed by the endings.
Instead of making a massive empty underworld in TotK, I wish they had focused on transforming the normal world after beating Gannon, for some extra content at the end.
after accidentally beating botw prematurely… which was very disappointing
Man I did this too! I was climbing around the castle looking for secrets and accidentally entered the boss room. Totally unprepared; all my weapons broke and I had to finish him off with bombs >.>
What bothered me more is the fight beeing no challenge at all. All of the blights were more difficult to beat than ganon himself
i have not played totk, but i have done the final fight of botw. botw is one of those games which is designeed to not have any post game, i guess you already know this, but if you do the final fight and defeat ganon, you see some cutscenes, you see credits, and then game is over, you do not get to be in a world where you have defeated ganon. if you continue, you resume from last save before ganon fight. it is the director’s prefered way (with which i do not completely agree, but sure, i respect it), so i do not think it necessarily ends the fun. (i actually had to defeat him thrice because of some glitches, i could not complete the scripted part of end fight twice). once you resume, you can “complete” the run, like complete all missions, all shrines ( i had only done some 30-40 before fight i guess), explore in general, buy a house, and you can keep on doing the final fight n number of times with different difficulties, like no healing, no weapons, etc.
BOTW
TOTK
It’s fun to dereference initialisms the first time they’re used.
Gamers know. But this isn’t a gaming community, so your point absolutely stands.
Zelda, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom
I never got very far in Breath of the Wild. I did the tutorial part (as in, until you unlock the whole world). I did a couple more of the puzzle dungeons, and those were fun, but for the most part, I did not like the game. I got to a point where no matter which way I went, I would die, quickly, to one-shot lasers or some other un-fun thing. So, I gave up on it. Never bothered with Tears of the Kingdom. I did like Echoes of Wisdom, though it was obvious they were stretching it out artificially. A Link to the Past was the last great Zelda game, though there have been other good ones. Mostly the 2D/2.5D games.
The play certainly isn’t what old school games were. I do wish there were more dungeons.
Breath of the Wild or Echoes of Wisdom? Because both had atypical Zelda gameplay (the former is a Souls-like and the latter is… a block building game? I dunno what else to call what you do with the echoes). But Breath of the Wild had like over 100 dungeons. They were all very small, though. Like one major puzzle and maybe a minor one or two. But yeah, Echoes of Wisdom had like six? But you had to go through so much BS to get to each one. I remember Minish Cap doing that and it was annoying. Nintendo really should have sold batteries as much as Game Boy games were made to make you waste them. Then again, A Link to the Past had 12-13 dungeons, and that was considered a lot back then.
I’ve heard, and it makes sense to me, that Breath of the Wild and A Link to the Past aren’t from the same series, just the same franchise. That the 3D Zelda games, starting with Ocarina of Time, and the 2D Zelda games, starting with The Legend of Zelda, are effectively two different series set in the same universe, but made to accomplish different things. And that tracks with my experience as I haven’t met a 3D Zelda I liked and I haven’t met a 2D Zelda I disliked. Yes, I rate Adventures of Link over both Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild. The transition to side scrolling was jarring, but otherwise, fantastic game. Horse Head (the first boss) still creeps me out. But anyway, I don’t know where I’d put Echoes of Wisdom. It’s absolutely a 2D Zelda and I love it, but it’s not really a Zelda game, more of “like a Zelda game” in the sense that Tunic was “like a Zelda game.” Still love it (and Tunic!) and hope we get more Zelda games where you play Zelda, but I’m not sure I want another Echoes game.
I guess the dungeoneering itself. It’s probably the main thing I wish was different if I could change anything. Getting keys, compasses, each room being a puzzle, relying on the map, and the final boss really being earned is probably more work though…I love the shrines of course.
The first game definitely would feel the same as what that other user described. It was also pretty brutal with the difficulty of combat unless you had full health to shoot lasers.
I just don’t finish most open world games. I go out, explore, find my own story, and enjoy. Nothing wrong with it.
I “finished” BotW and then spent probably another 150-200 hours on it after. It didn’t feel like it was really done until I found all of the shrines and armor sets. I never finished TotK because the sky was annoying to navigate and the underneath area was very samey. Also I found the new mechanics to be a little too immersion breaking. Not that BotW was the most immersive game ever. I was really disappointed with TotK.
Did a round-trip around BOTW not trying to 100% it and just have a fun time, which it was! You are in control of your journey, I really liked it and all things I have had discovered felt more rewarding because of it.
Played TOTK for a couple of hours and never touched it since then. I guess its because I am under the impression I already know the world… I know changed things up a bit but I think the main driving point, the exploration of the original game was missing because of it.
Between the two I still favor botw, but once I learned to make gadgets I spent a lot of time making stupid things which was pretty entertaining. Especially with rockets.
If it helps, ToTK has an entire additional second map underground, and another roughly half filled map of sky islands.
Yea, that is true. I did play enough to get underground and at first it was fun exploring, but traversing it was just too cumbersome for me. It is probably easier once you get more items to build contraptions with but I think I just expected more exploration and less gmod. But maybe I will give it another try knowing what im getting myself into.
For Zelda games, the gauntlet challenges are what I have to come back to months later. In BOTW, there was Trial of the Sword. Still haven’t finished that one. There’s just something about the whole setup that stresses me out. Strange counterpoint, the Eventide Island shrine quest was probably my favorite part of the game.
I do it sometime. The recent “i’m done” is The Forest and Sonic Mania, both i couldn’t bring myself to finish because it bores me.
BOTW is a fun one, but i really like the memory hunt using the picture. Once all of it is done the game is pretty barren, i find Skyrim/FO4 have more interesting place to visit than BOTW.
Yep.
I have a trail of “almost finished” games. TV, too.
I suspect it’s a neurodivergence thing, as I’ve seen this discussed under AuADHD memes.
I found BOTW just interminably boring. I never even really started the game because it just felt empty. “Go anywhere! Do anything!” Yeah, but there’s nowhere interesting to go and nothing interesting to do.
i do this a lot. there’s some mental wall you get over by rolling credits, and the post game feels like climbing back down.
