185 hours, 68%. I’d love to keep going, but at the same time I’ve mostly run out of things in game that I feel like completing.
About 5. It really wasn't doing it for me. I should probably try again since it was so damn expensive, but I really wasn't getting what I hoped out of a new BOTW-style zelda game.
So like mostly the tutorial area? I wasn't feeling it either for the first maybe 10 hours, but then I got most of the starter quests out of the way, started to set my own goals and the game really opened up like BotW. I'm about 150 hours in and there's still so much to do.
I got off the tutorial island 1-2 hours of gameplay ago. So far it feels like a sloppier version of BOTW with significantly more tutorials (for things BOTW taught me without a tutorial!) that is way more linear, and I really do not get the hype at all. I went around trying to turn towers on to try and feel some freedom and am really shocked by how identical the overworld is. Any time I enter caves I die instantly so apparently I’m ages off from being allowed to explore those. If I could return it I would have.
I absolutely get it. One of my criticism of Totk is exactly that, that the start of the game holds your hand too much. Botw was pretty much "here are the main abilities and there you can end the game. Now go do whatever you want." while totk is "this is how you do this, this is how you do that, here you can find this and there you can find that", but once you get through the initial tutorialization the game becomes more like botw.
As for instantly dying in caves, compared to botw totk is actually much harder early game. I died quite a few times at the start but after learning the tools the game gives and how I should approach certain enemies I die (or rather waste my fairies) more out of negligence than genuine difficulty. For instance I don't know why but I refused to fuse horns to weapons, which is pretty stupid because the primary purpose of the horns is to be fused to weapons to increase damage and durability.
The depths are kinda boring - the environment is very bland, it's all the same shit. Being able to jump out of the sky to get to any land objective is convenient and kinda kills the whole aspect of riding around on your horse which I really enjoyed in BoTW. The sky areas are very cool, I do enjoy them. It was kinda neat to see the same kingdom plus changes. New abilities are cool. Vehicles are kinda meh since wings and balloons time out, and you're almost guaranteed on your land rig to quickly run into an obstacle it cannot pass, making it kinda useless. All that said, I'm still having a lot of fun with it, but it's not as good as I was hoping.
Depths are more interesting the more you explore them, especially all the yiga clan outposts. I don't think it's meant for you to stay down there too long though. The sky islands to get around is amazing, flying around feels like super hero shit. And you still need a horse to get around to areas you haven't explored yet. Vehicles and wings still last a LONG time before they expire and you can just make another one... and if your ground vehicle hits an obstacle either use bigger wheels or just pick it up... I am not seeing how any of this is an issue.
I feel like it did take a while to have the open-but-connected feel of Breath of the Wild. It has got there now but I was pretty concerned for a while about how disconnected the world felt. That was what made BotW so memorable, every part of the world had a characters with their own important story and the interaction Link had with those characters and their story mattered and would have meaningful effects on them.
Are you from Mars or something? But seriously, go back and give it another try. It's one of the few games I've played in the last number of years that's kept me coming back.
It feels like a breath of the wild gmod rom hack that gives me neither of what either games provide
Asking in the past tense is making some assumptions.
165 hours across 26 days
I don’t know what percentage I finished at but I at least reached my goal of getting every shrine and lightroot. This is a picture I took after finishing my playthrough.
What do you mean "did" lol
255 hours for around 76% completion
That's for all shrines, gems, wells, sage wills, and bag slots unlocked. I guess there's a pretty hefty weighting to the rest of the Koroks?
Yeah, the koroks are always really heavy weight. I think I left off with around 65%, and I had done most side quests, got all shrines + sages wills, and only about 100 koroks. I just can't find it in me to go for the koroks knowing what the reward is.
I've got ~60 by now. Though I havn't really touched it in a few weeks. Maybe I should finish it...
I ended off with about 150 hours aswell. I didn't make a super large push to do absolutely everything before finishing the story, I decided early on that I was saving it for Master Mode. On an unrelated note, it's a bit of a bummer that Master Mode wasn't in at launch. I hope they don't make the enemies regenerate health again though!
I've put around 240+ hours into TOTK but not because I am a completionist or anything, it's mostly because I don't like using fast travel and I enjoy traveling the world, finding secrets or hidden locations.
But I have to admit that I overdid it, towards the end I felt a little burned out due to this.
I'm over 80 hours in and I'm not even close to finishing the main quest. I've done 2 of the 4 initial temples, lots of shrines and korok seeds, but taking my time and enjoying every new section of the map. Not in a hurry, I've been enjoying other games in between. Plus, if this is anything like BotW, I'll still be playing it 3 or 4 years from now.
I got off the tutorial island 1-2 hours ago and was walking around turning area towers on. I’ve tried to enter the caves but I die within 30 seconds any time I try, so I’ve given up until I get more hearts. So far it feels like a mediocre rom hack of breath of the wild to me. I don’t feel like I get anything out of this game that breath of the wild didn’t do significantly better, it’s sloppier and less well considered imo. (Like, why does it have so many explicit unskippable tutorials for things that BOTW already taught me naturally?)
I mean...you're still in the opening of the game. The tutorials stop once you get into the meat of things. Maybe I'm just spoiled by having played Skyward Sword with its extremely pervasive tutorials, but these aren't even something I noticed in TotK.
You keep mentioning how sloppy it is. What apart from the tutorial issue do you find sloppy? I'd like to understand because the prevailing take on the game is that it is BotW but bigger and better in basically every way. I'm about 120 hours in and I tend to agree pretty strongly with that sentiment.
Like I said, breath of the wild taught me all of the same things without popping up an unskippable text cloud every 5 minutes. The starting area of BOTW didn’t basically fall apart if you happen to not follow the intended circuit around the starting area like TOTK does (I was so confused because I went to the shrines in a scattershot order and so all the linearly designed building tutorials came in the wrong order)
Honestly the only good part so far has been the building tutorials because they let you just figure shit out on your own, unfortunately like I said they’re almost incoherent if you go to them in the wrong order like I happened to.
Somehow mechanically this game feels like it’s the less refined game that would later get made into something polished and refined like BOTW despite this one being made taking 6 years and recycling the same map. It feels like a very sophisticated rom hack. Lacking all the exploration I wanted from this type of game. I really am not a fan.
Right, so that is really only the tutorials you are criticizing. And then a "lack of polish".
I can't imagine what part of the actual game mechanics feel less refined than BotW, it's the same game mechanics for the most part. I'd love to know specificsv regarding what you feel doesn't hit right with TotK.
If I were criticizing some things I would argue that the fuse mechanic is clunky, and that navigating inventory for throwing or fusing is a chore and could use streamlining.
I think that talking about it being the same map is a fair argument for how far you are into the game. When you play longer you find out about all the sky islands and the depths, which vastly expand the traversable area with new things. Also the map overall is similar at first glance but actually quite a bit different as you traverse it. In my opinion it ends up feeling fresh anyway as a result but again that's just my opinion.
You're entitled to your opinion so don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. But your opinion is definitely pretty niche so I'm curious.
I'm like 40 hours in, did all the temples and now am searching for tears. Kind of slowed down on the game though, still struggle with lynels and ain't touching no gleeoks for a while, haha.
245 hours and counting - though slowed down a lot lately.
I did all main quests, side adventures, shrines, and lightroots, and have been focusing on armor upgrades and side quests mostly now.
52.36% at 130 hrs. I felt myself burning out on the game and it was eating up a lot of my productivity so I made a push to finish the main quest. I don't see myself coming back to the game anytime soon so I'll probably be stuck at that % and playtime for a while
Where can you see the %?
You can find it when you open the map in the bottom right corner after you finish the game I believe. My switch is being repaired right now, but it's certainly in one of those corners.
Ah but definitely only once finished?
Yup!
160 hours! I loved it! I wanna go back at some point to finish levelling up all the armours
Quit after 10 hours.
Great fuck around in engineering simulator.
Terrible terrible actual game.
I'm on about 40-50 hours. I'm still playing but I checked out mentally after the conclusion of the Goron main quest. Why should I give time and attention to the story when there's barely any effort put into the narrative and characters? Even worse is when the story treats you like a child. I get it's supposed to appeal to all including younger audiences but surely there's a way to do that while making it genuinely interesting as an adult.
The side quests are ok. The exploration isn't cutting it for me because I've already played BOTW, and the novelty of the world has worn off with that. The sky islands and depths, while cool at first, simply isn't even enough. The copy-pasted sky islands are egregious considering how few of them there are. When travelling to a destination, it's almost never worth dropping down to check something out.
The new abilities are way better, but again after 10-15 hours it isn't enough. There's only so many puzzles involving building something before it becomes tedious because that ability is used EVERYWHERE. The fuse ability rarely makes a difference with its unique attributes it gives to weapons, most of the time being used to just increase damage. You end up just hoarding weapons, then when its time, drop a bunch of materials with the highest fuse power, fuse, use weapons and repeat. It would be the same if all weapons was just buffed and remove the need for that part.
I'm a bit annoyed that the shrine system hasn't been improved upon or reformed at all. It sucks going into a shrine always knowing what reward you'll get. Rewards are always equal, but not all shrines are equal. For the shrines where the reward is just finding/unlocking them, why do I still have to go INTO the shrine? Just give me the spirit orb. It's also great stumbling across a tutorial shrine that teaches you how to parry when I'm 20 hours in.
The new divine dungeons have better bosses, but the dungeones themselves are essentially 5 mini shrines in one with a reward worth less than 5 shrines.
Really disappointing compared to my first 15 hours of BOTW. I'm just glad I'm not playing on the Switch's hardware. It's not necessarily a bad game, not at all, and I'll keep playing it casually... but I'm a bit perplexed at how positive the critical reception has been.
It just seems like this game isn't for you, and there is nothing wrong with that. Games are entertainment, and if one isn't entertaining for you, you don't have to force yourself to play it.
Hope you find a game that you enjoy as much as we are enjoying TotK! Good luck!
Hope you find a game that you enjoy as much as we are enjoying TotK! Good luck!
Snide much 🙄
Na, it was meant to be a good wish. I want people to enjoy the games. My apologies if my wording made you feel otherwise.
Probably unpopular opinion but I burned out on BOTW before I even beat 2 divine beasts, and felt like I beat all the shrines I could get to without getting one shot by enemies in the area so kind of felt totally stuck… I haven’t even picked up TOTK yet as I figured it would be more of the same.
And they kept that annoying weapon breaking mechanic which I always hated… been getting around to playing BOTW again with mods before moving on to TOTK, but also heard about the pretty awful performance on Switch so will probably buy it but just play on emulator to get a decent frame rate or wait for a Switch 2 and pray for backward compatibility support like PS5 has for PS4 games to get better performance.
TOTK performance on switch is not bad at all. I don't know where what perception came from. I haven't experienced any low frame rate issues after 100 hours.
That’s great to hear. I had heard complaints about dips down to like 15fps and just generally being a 30fps game at very low render resolution that still had trouble with stable frame times. But I haven’t actually played it so it could just be the usually internet complaining. Now that I think of it I heard performance complaints about BOTW too but never noticed any while playing myself.
I have for sure ran into performance issues during really demanding sections. I think the honest take is, as a switch game, the resolution and framerate are lower than if this was on Xbox Series X. At the same time, I think it's high enough that the game still looks great and quite stable. We aren't talking Pokémon Scarlet type constant frame drops for no reason. Performance issues were very rarely a concern - I think the game is well designed and it truly is something where a significant frame drop won't happen for multiple play sessions.
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