this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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BG3 > TotK easily.
I'm excited for BG3 but I guess I struggle to see why it needs to be compared to TotK at all. Feels like that is selling both games a bit short. They aren't really that similar.
They're competing for GotY, probably the only reason they're getting compared.
Which is a perfect example of the irrelevance of awards, and not just in gaming but pretty much any other subject. The fact I like pizza doesn't influence how much I love cake and people who love soup are also right.
I think it's a fair question that if both are transcendental games, which transcends over the other?
My argument would be that one doesn't transcend over the other. It's probably obvious but I also think numbered review scores are inherently flawed, because the metric is subjective and meaningless.
I much prefer a tiers system. These are both top tier games. Anyone can agree they are of exemplary quality and represent some of the best their genre has to offer. Any argument beyond that very quickly devolves into squabbles over subjective preference and that is a bit pointless to me.
As an example, a few of my favorite games of all time are Earthbound, Half-Life, Super Mario World, Metroid Prime, and Skyrim. I would rank all 5 of these games in my top tier. But what point is there in trying to rank them amongst each other? They have nothing to do with one another, so I have no meaningful way to compare them. If I use numbering, would I rank Earthbound a 9.7 and Metroid Prime a 9.5 and that means Earthbound is a better game? 2 tenths better? What does that even mean? I just don't find value in that kind of arbitrary comparison.
I can't agree it's that easy a win at all. Both are outstanding games, doing very different things excellently
BG3 is immensely good and I'm really enjoying it so far. I have to say I had more pure fun playing TotK and would call it the better game. I love them both though.
My issue with TotK is it was fun until one day it suddenly wasn't. I explored pretty much the whole map but never finished the main story
Oh man at least jump in and beat the final boss. The ending is amazing and extremely satisfying.
Damn really? I'll have to do it then
10/10 ending
Idk about that, it's very very hard to compare the two and to which is better. Objectively, they're both amazing games and very high quality. Think from there, what determines what's better is what your preference is. I like them both for different reasons and can just tell you I'm immersed and having tons of fun with both.
Counterpoint: TotK is running on a 7 year old phone, the fact that it works at all is remarkable
Seriously. The Switch is a piece of shit and it looks beautiful and plays well and has so much depth and complexity. Sure, it doesn't have raytracing, but have you seen those sunsets?
BG2 > TotK, but it has nothing to do with hardware
If I want to play a Zelda game, BG3 sucks. If I want to play a Baldur's Gate game, TotK sucks.
If I want to play a Tetris game, they both suck.
Yup! So why directly compare them? They're all very different experiences
Have you played TotK?
I thought TOTK was great, but it's not like it was good enough to compare good games against. Like, it's just BOTW with a new story and some QOL fixes. It's essentially a $70 standalone DLC. I could probably list a few games that came out this year that I liked better.
You obviously have not played TotK. It is not a dlc in anyway. I don't know what DLCs you've been playing.
You're basically saying that A link to the past is a dlc with QoL changes to The Legend of Zelda on NES.
What you are saying that I'm saying is not what I'm saying at all. A Link to the Past has a new map, new items, new graphics, all new enemies, movement felt different etc. Everything about it was completely different from the original except the formula.
TotK has the same items that you have to get again for some reason. It has the same map, which means you have to tread the same ground again, it's the exact same graphics, except more dropped frames. You have to find a bunch of shrines again to get health and stamina upgrades just like the first game. You have to find Koroks (many in the same exact locations they were in the first game!) again to get inventory upgrades.
It's the same game with a new story and QOL fixes. I stand by that. I loved the QOL fixes. They fixed everything I had to complain about with BotW. I just wish I didn't just play BotW right before TotK, because I felt like I was just doing more of the same things over again, and that was extremely boring. I had to go to the same stables again in the same places. I had to go through the forest in the same place again. I had to go to the castle again. I had to do a dungeon near each of the 4 species settlements again (in the exact same places as before). I had to do a long side quest to own a house to be able to safely store items again.
TotK is what BotW should have been from the start.
Breath of the wild had two maps. The world, and the shrines.
Tears of the kingdom has four maps. The sky. The over world. Caves. And the depths. Not to mention the temples that replaced the four beasts are much larger than those beasts. They went back to OoT size temples.
The over world is very much different than it was in BotW. The number of quests is vastly more than in BotW.
Yeah you get heart containers again. Just like in every single Zelda game ever made.
The graphics, lighting, and especially the physics are improved a huge amount from BotW. (Although strangely the rain effect is worse). Like those are the things every game dev have been drooling over since it was released. And it runs at a smoother consistent frame rate than the previous game as well.
Sure you could argue BotW should have been TotK. You could also argue Super Mario Bros 3 should have been Super Mario World.
Gonna have to agree to disagree here. There just wasn't enough different for me to enjoy it as a whole new game. It was just too similar, and playing them back to back detracted from how much fun I had rather than adding to it.
Though I want to be clear about one complaint I had. I wasn't annoyed by getting heart containers again. As you pointed out, that's in every game. I was annoyed that I had to do shrines again. The reward could have been anything from the shrines, and I would have been annoyed. Shrines were the worst thing of any Zelda game imo, and they brought it back essentially unchanged from BotW. The fact that the reward was exactly the same as the previous game was just extra annoying.
Edit: btw, I really don't like that you keep putting words in my mouth. I'm not even talking about Mario games. This has nothing to do with them. The complaints I have about the similarities between these two games do not apply to those games.
I'll agree to disagree. But I think you're really missing everything special in the game. It's a pure sequel, and that something we've never had in the series. It literally quadruples every aspect of BotW.
Edit. I never put words in your mouth. I'm not sorry you can't understand how some things can be like other things. You not being able to grasp relations between concepts in a conversation pretty much makes you being unable to grasp the concepts and improvements between these games moot.
So idk, learn to think more. It's pretty stupid you got insulted somehow by comparing games.
The point is Nintendo fans start to look like fifa fans. So, besides content blocking, Nintendo is trying to one up EA in the scummy department. Why isn't totk a dlc? Why did it take 6 years then? They had the same thing with majoras mask but that took just one year wtf. This sounds insane and the cherry on top is that people think it's the best game of the year. Gaming is doomed, there is no more demand for quality+inovation. Everyone big in the industry is playing it super safe and instead of being humble for not taking riscs they act like dicks. Which is mirrored in the fans tribalistic defense of the games. Totk is bad from a philosoficaly stand point and you can't stop people from comparing the game with what it could of been! Better availability, better story as a sequel, real inovation rather than ticktock gimics and so many more things. It's sad that its game of the year material due to lack of competition.
Play the game before commenting, thanks
How?
I feel like a game should be universal, like anyone can play chess. Or tic-tac-to. But shit Nintendo pulls of is clear tribalistic marketing, and I don't hate you when I say it's philosoficaly bad on multiple fronts. The game quality and quantity wise is ok, great actually, but one or two goods doesn't balance 1000 sins. One of them is availability, its very simple, I can't buy the game, I can play the game but I can't buy it and because of this sol fact I won't play it, it's a form of protest, same with the rest of Nintendo ip that isn't nes or SNES. And I'll take it further, game of the year should be available for purchase for all people that have a high power gaming device, if it's not it doesn't matter how good the game is, it shouldn't hold the name "game of the year" and thus get niched to the hells of which it came. "Game of the year for X platform". And not a general thing, if baldurs gate can't run on switch why would you compare it to a Zelda game that launched in the same year that cant officialy be purchased for PC ...fundamentally broken. My mid tier PC can play totk in 1440p 60 fps can your switch do that ? Achieve high frame rate without distorting the shit out of the image ? Or not looking like a slide show when resolution is high? me not playing the game is fair play, you not saying it's game of the year would also be fair play in contrast. But if you say it's game of the year, or most of you nintendiots say it's "game of the year period" I'll play the game and tell you it's shit on the switch compared to PC ? Same unavailable game, different quality ... Fundamentally broken. Also instead of having 1 huge dlc for 70 bucks released after 6 years of waiting how about a better version of 5 normal sized dlcs priced at 20 bucks with year to year release and a minimum of 10 hours main story with 20 hours completion game play and at the end have a free one that ties all of them toghete if you purchased all of them, this is the same content presented in a more inovative way that actually makes sense and would explain the recycled nature of the content inside it.
It's not remotely the same game lol
Is every shooter the same game?
I really don't understand the "$70 DLC" comments. Maybe I'm too old, but TotK is the perfect example of what a sequel is.
Maybe expansion is a better term than DLC.
It's a new story inside the same game. Same map, same gameplay loop (find shrines, find Koroks, do side quests). I can't think of another sequel where the entire game takes place in the same map. Majora's Mask was a sequel with mostly re-used assets, but it got a new map.
The games that do share a map, like Spider-man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, are largely considered stand-alone expansions.
There are at least 3 more new maps on top of the world map, and that been changed a lot.
Additional areas aren't enough to call it not an expansion. Plenty of expansions have more maps in addition to the existing maps. Think TW3: Blood and Wine. Some of it takes place in the old areas, some of it takes place in new areas. It's still an expansion.
Halo 3: ODST took place solely in a new map. You even play as a new character with an entirely new story with all new characters. It was still a standalone expansion. That was more of a different game than TotK was from BotW.
But I feel like we're both focusing on the map too much, but that's not even the main thing that I disliked. That barely even scratches the surface of the issues I had with the game. And to be honest, I don't find anything inherently wrong with the map. It was the map being largely the same on top of the other things that didn't change that irked me.
Things I didn't like about TotK:
I'm focusing a lot on the negative here, which makes it seem like I didn't like the game, but I thought it was great. I just thought having both BotW and TotK be so similar took away from how good TotK was, because you do the same things in both games. I wish they would have tweaked more. Just having no shrines and no Koroks and replacing those mechanics with a different way to get hearts, stamina, and inventory space would have made the game 1000x better. Not having the same outfits again would have made the game much better as well.
If they came out with another game in the BotW/TotK series, I would skip it. I'm just not interested in finding shrines for a third time. I miss pre-BotW Zelda games.
Yeah, TOTK is too similar to BOTW structural wise, it's very easy to get bored of the grind and just do sandbox thing once in a while.(and that's with dup glitch in mind, without dupe those crafty machines won't see the day since the time required to get enough zonites to do the auto build.) I basically haven't even finish the 4 spirits yet (got 3) and decides to play BG3 instead, and that's a good choice, so much more brain engaging in this game as well.(and that's even with save scumming, mostly to see what other paths of conversation go.) The battle is pretty balanced if you turn off karmic dice.(on balanced difficulty.) I only restart battle when I misclick and attacked on my own party.
I haven't even played BG3 yet, but I wouldn't fault anyone for saying this. I lost a month and a half to TOTK and enjoyed every second. It fixed every gripe I had about BOTW, but that's kind of the problem as well. I always felt like BOTW was a glorified tech demo, and after playing TOTK, it felt more like the game BOTW should have been.
TOTK also has its own issues, especially with the story. The story just being told to you and not being something you're really experiencing was a weird choice. I was hoping for Ganondorf's involvement to be more than "it was me Link!" leading up to the final confrontation.
The final boss fight was an insanely awesome sequence though. Easily my favorite part of the game.
I agree with not really being a part of the story. You do play a part a little more in Totk, but it's still mostly watching cutscenes from the past again. Such a weird narrative to stick to.
Also, did you know that was the imprisoning war?
Secret stone? Demon king?
If they named them Sacred Stones the whole thing might be one tiny bit less cringe
Nah.