Overview of Zelda Franchise and TotK

When it comes to video games, Zelda and I have always gotten together like Sonic and Autism. There's just something magical about this series that's resonated with me and millions of other neurodivergents only for the-Oh, sick, thanks! Only for it to become one of the most important franchises in like the history of video games. Seriously, get a piss sample from any of your favorite titles and you're guaranteed to find Zelda ancestry somewhere within its DNA. Whether that's you walking onto shit, seeing a day or night cycle, or being in an open world, that all goes back to Zelda. This series is everywhere, and it's so beloved that its own logo became like a whole ass dog whistle between gamers to identify each other. And it still is to this day. And if you're still somehow not convinced, this one game alone in the franchise practically spawned the video essay. At this point, Zelda isn't even a video game, Zelda is video games. UGH! However, despite its massive fanbase, after Zelda's introduction into the third dimension, the franchise would really struggle to meet Nintendo's internalized sales metrics, to the point where they were this close to putting the entire series on ice. Mainly because Nintendo just can't get out of their own way when it comes to business decisions, and I made a whole video on this over here. But 20 years after Ocarina of Time's release, we would witness this franchise drop its most successful and ambitious title ever, 3x-ing the sales of its prior bestseller, generating $2 billion in revenue. That's a-that's like a million dollars. Breath of the Wild reviewed phenomenally well, and would grow a cult following that would rival those of the people who like orbit Elon Musk reply tweets with like AI imp-oh it's fucking weird. This game was hailed as the second coming of Michael Jackson, and for good reason. However, people started to notice that there was something kinda off about this game. And if you had anything to say in the matter, you could... You could go ahead and come right up here. Yeah, mic's on. At the time, to say anything negative about this game was considered blasphemy. But just because you make something unspeakable, it doesn't make opinions go away. They just go underground where they can fester and echo, and that's exactly what happened here. Worst of all... A lot of it started to make sense. People started grumbling about the dungeons in the game, kind of... kind of sucking dick. People were frustrated with the aggressive weapon degradation, the lack of substantial cities, bosses, things to explore, rewards, and all the other same things we've heard a thousand times before in every other YouTube video. I have seen dead horses beat more than this topic. But fuck it, one more swing can't hurt, because you're gonna hear me say it all again. But then all of the sudden, the fastest six years of our lives slide by, and Nintendo's already teasing us with Tears of the Kingdom, The new big-ass Zelda game coming to console, although it's rumored to have the same executive role from Breath of the Wild, and for a game franchise that fundamentally relies on adventuring and exploring, uh, isn't really checking off that whole, like, adventuring and exploring box. Worse yet, the whole new zazzy edition of Sky Islands isn't really helping the whole trust-me-bro-it's-not-DLC allegations, which at this point are spreading like grass fire, and worse yet, the last game to have Sky Islands kinda f***ed those up too, so people are rightfully asking each other, what the f*** is this game? See to some people, they saw Tears of the Kingdom and thought it was either a sequel to Breath of the Wild, or just a DLC expansion. It's actually neither of those things. In reality, this game has completely and utterly replaced one of the greatest selling Nintendo games of all time, while somehow making the original feel like an early access rough draft with more wavy lines and my own scripts. Granted, it's far from perfect, trust me you're gonna see me lose my shit in a minute, but this thing is almost everything Breath of the Wild should have been, complete with some of the most impressive gameplay mechanics I've seen in the last 10 years of gaming, while somehow running off the hardware of like an- iPhone 6. How does it do this? What does it fix? What does it definitely not fix? Is it truly as bad as all these other YouTubers are saying, or are they all just smoking crack? To answer these questions, we have to give this thing a little bit of c-The year is 2017. Nintendo's finally released their highly anticipated first open world Zelda game since like the pre-Cambrian era, and you can even take it on the go. At the very same time, I was about to go on my first ever international tour with my band. So don't shut up about that enough. Where I'd be living out of a bus for the next two months with nothing to do. I needed this thing in my life. It would chase after it like a white girl during an Adderall shortage, okay? I must have spent the amount of money of like a third world country's GDP to get my hands on a freshly scalped Switch and a copy of Breath of the Wild. I get on the road, I boot it up, and about 30 hours of gameplay later, I come to the conclusion that I'm not having fucking fun. What is wrong with me? I'm over here questioning my entire identity like I can quote like every Zelda dubstep rap and Smosh video to date Do I even enjoy Zelda games anymore? Did something change within me from like the six years between Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild that made me some like Miserable jaded asshole who no longer enjoys fun? Nah, I just like my shit breaking 24-7 To me, the entire game felt a mile wide, but an inch deep, making me feel like a bit of a dumbass for coming into this thing with my scooby gear. Don't get me wrong, it's still a phenomenal game on many levels. Hell, the combat alone smokes like fucking anything in the series. But at the time, I didn't feel that grand adventure. I felt directionless and apathetic. Anytime I found cool shit in the wilderness, it would always break on me, only to be replaced with twigs and pot lids, disincentivizing me from even enjoying the game's great combat. But what's worse than all of that, I still can't remember a single room from any of the dungeons. I can't remember a single shrine out of the 120 that were in the game. And worst of all, I still don't even remember the plot of the game. Aside from that one cutscene of Zelda's ass. They nailed that one. No Zelda game has done this to me, and never before have I felt such a strong compulsion to want to check my phone throughout the entirety of this game. And it turns out, a lot of Core Zelda fans felt the same exact way. Why is that you ask? Because at the heart of it, Breath of the Wild is the exact opposite of the Core Zelda approach we've all grown familiar with over the last 30 years, training its more linear epic journeys and intimate locales for a much more minimalistic yet freely expansive world. Weirdly enough, I actually replayed the game on the Switch where I just turned off the weapon degradation and stamina and I had a blast playing it on like a 36 hour drive on A much later tour cuz I don't show up about those enough point being I went into this game with good faith intentions And it's just not what I and many other Zelda fans wanted out of the game I bring this up to see as a neutral party on Breath of the Wild You can trust me when I say that tears of the kingdom It's actually fucking gas! This thing is basically Breath of the Wild packet punched in almost all the right ways. Weapon degradation actually makes sense now. The new building mechanics can be a full-price game in and of itself. The reused world feels brand new to me because I've apparently forgotten all of it. This number on the game actually has a story and it's by far one of the best in the entire series. Making me wonder why the fuck is it any of this shit in Breath of the Wild? That said, it's not perfect. There are just some fucking stupid ass decisions they made in this game that completely kneecap it from being a true 10 out of 10. But before we can get into the game itself, it is my genuine pleasure to announce the sponsorship of this video that I've been trying to get for about a year and a half now, which is Manscaped. The fuck is that logo? If you've been around the channel, then you know that I only take sponsored ad reads if I like the product and use it personally. Or they just bribe me. But for the longest time I remember hearing Manscaped thrown around through every YouTube ad and podcast bit, wondering if it's......you know, like......that good? It's that good. I have used exactly three different body trimmers, the same three that everyone steals from Walmart, and every time I wrap up down there, it always leaves me looking like I'm on my period. At least until I tried the Lawn Mower 4.0. Actually, hold up. Slight correction, I've taken so long on this video that they've managed to come out with the Lawn Mower 5.0. Which is somehow even better than the 4.0. This thing is insane. You can just straight up just... It's f***ing great. I even tried to cut myself with this thing. I put the small scar they had on there, I took it point blank to my sh**. It would not slice it. This thing was able to shave parts of me that I didn't even know I had. Oh my god, there's two of them. Now, Manscaped can be this giant PDF of all their talking points and their technology with their ceramic coating, nano fiber, I don't... You don't care. I don't-for all I care this thing runs off of soul gems because I swear to God this thing is black magic It's got a flashlight. It's waterproof. It's got a travel lock good battery life. Get this get this all right It's got a wireless charger Who? Aside from like a Sonicare I cannot think of a better Investment than one of these things for your personal hygiene if you click the link below and use my code manly not only are they gonna Give you 20% off and free shipping They're also throwing in a bunch of extra doodads and bullshit too like this leather traveling case a t-shirt and like a fucking I-Thank you so much to Manscaped for actually sponsoring the video. I've been reaching out to you guys for years now I am forever a lifelong fan I think you will be too. So with that said Back on to the video. Going back to Tears of the Kingdom unlike the first game Which just sort of had you get up and go This time around it slows down the pace where you're exploring the caves beneath Hyrule Castle with Zelda and a metric shit ton of hearts Well, she just kind of rattles off exposition at a very Nintendo pace. We'll keep going Coming up from beneath Hyrule Castle. T-t-t-today, Junior! In any other game, I'd normally enjoy this if she didn't sound like she was constantly on the verge of tears. Of the kingdom. You continue spelunking around here with Zelda before you accidentally bump into, and subsequently resurrect the game's newest and by far most badass villain. Dehydrated Ganon. Where the Master Sword completely snaps, Link loses an arm and Zelda almost falls to her death before save scumming some prehistoric autosave. And what has to be one of the shortest refractory periods in Zelda history, Ganon's just back again and more powerful than ever. He busts a nut so hard it sends half of Hyrule into the sky, causing chaos across the lands and spawning in a bunch of new Sky Islands. Some undisclosed time later. You wake up on the first of the Sky Islands only to find the games pulled a Metroid on you, not only leaving you with the busted Master Sword and a bullshit three hearts, but you now have a bright new shiny green prosthetic right arm which is going to be the source of all your powers. It's been gifted to us by this long dead ancient goat bro named Raru, who's going to loosely guide us through the game's tutorial. It was I that spoke to you earlier. That arm originally belonged to me. Now give it back. And right off the bat, I'm stoked they're finally adding in new species to this franchise instead of just recycling the same old fish, air, and rock people all over again. They even added in some new minorities this time around. Nice job. I always thought this game was at its best when it was adding in new fantasy type characters like, like Twilight Princess and... Eh, well you already know why. And the first thing I noticed just taking my first step off the Sky Island here is just how fucking good this game looks. Oh my god. Like, listen, I love shitting on Nintendo more than anyone else here. But you got I gotta hand it to him like this game looks so pretty Despite it running at like two frames per second, but you know Not my problem. Man, look at this. Look at this sunset. Yeah, I mean, I'm-Nick, this and a Capri Sun, bro. But it's not like I really-It's light. I don't know. Now, upon visiting your very first shrine, you're granted with the game's major selling point, which are the glue mechanics. And look, I'll be honest. We all saw the advertisements for the new Ultra Hand mechanic, and I started to get a little bit nervous. Because within seconds of this game's release, everyone on the internet had seemed to already figure out how to make beings to surpass Metal Gear. Whether that's slot machines, robots, autonomous mechs that all have like- Freakin orbital laser level attacks. I love it Meanwhile, I'm over here throughout the entirety of the game still to this day trying to figure out which end of the fans suck or blow I feel like I'm doing both see I personally am NOT a massive fan of the whole open-world Crafty game genre aside from Minecraft and I was worried that I'd be missing out on a larger part of the experience of the game But not having an engineering degree in thing bobs and doodads Not that I don't Pretty good at the blocks. But the crazy thing is, you don't need any of it. It is shockingly amazing just how intuitive the building mechanics are in this game, while still not sacrificing any of the complexity of the later puzzles. And if you're not convinced, you can break this game with just two fans and a steering stick, in what me and my friends like to call... Shitbike. God bless-God bless Shitbike, man. This thing's gonna save you hours of just tedious bullshit, like all the pre-gaming to get to the dungeons. Oh my god, it's so- I'm gonna eat half myself. Anyways, once you've killed about five hours building random doodads and figuring out just how many ways you can fuck up building a boat, you'll eventually make your way to shrine number two. It's here you'll find the game's second biggest mix-up here called the fuse mechanic, allowing Link to weld anything in his environment to whatever base, weapon, or shield he's holding. And I mean literally anything, whether that's a boulder, a tree trunk, severed heads, limbs, a 98 dodge drink, fucking anything you want. This has to be... One of the smartest decisions in this game because it completely fixes the one issue everyone had in Breath of the Wild Which is the weapons had the same durability as the glass bones from that one dude from Spongebob Oh, no As a result players were disincentivized to engage in the game's combat just because you wouldn't want to burn the good gear you had on you There's even enemies in that game that you couldn't kill if you didn't have enough Weapon ammo stored upon you because it would all shatter before you even get the thing to half health and I understand some arguments say it's A balancing mechanic so you don't get too much good stuff early on Here's the thing. I literally fucking cheated in the game, and I turned off weapon degradation. I straight up had way more fun playing the game on that version. Not only did this allow me to engage in fights guilt-free, I'd also get excited when I'd find new gear and upgrades because I actually get to keep it. And I'd still get my ass kicked in fights. But Tears of the Kingdom solves this problem by letting you build baller-ass weapons out of the garbage around you. What's even better, though, is that all the enemies drop monster parts like drill bits and hammers that are on their head, which directly correspond to the difficulty of the enemy, meaning the harder things to kill... The better shit you get to make better weapons, which is like the-Th-th-th-that's how you-that's how you do it! You were finally incentivizing combat! Why the fuck wasn't this in Breath of the Wild?! Not only does this make the weapon degradation actually make sense, it's actually a fun mechanic now because whenever your stuff breaks, you have an opportunity to just build something cool in its place. And the game lets you be creative with whatever you want to make, whether that's whips, scythes, flames, swords, fucking... transmissions, like... The most crazy thing to me though is that despite this thing being so well thought out, they completely blundered when it came to fusing anything to your shield. If you attach any zone eye part that has a function like a fire hydrant or a flamethrower to a shield, even a f***ing flashlight, the shield will disintegrate in like five seconds because it's like using up too much power. I don't know. It's just crazy to me. Like, how did you guys not think this through? It shouldn't take some idiot YouTuber who can't even spell calendar half the time to point out the obvious flaws in your game. Like here's an example. Why do the shields still disintegrate whenever you snowboard on them down a hill? Dang man, that's some ghetto ride you got rolling though. That's just a pure unfun mechanic No one likes that. An iron shield that can tank claymore bushes should be able to last longer than an actual snowboard Anyways, anyways while you're on the starting island You'll eventually make your way to the third shrine where you unlock the ability to just straight up phase through ceilings above you. Which is a super handy mechanic that just lets you save time by not having to backtrack out of things like caves and buildings and just lets you pop up on the roof. I will applaud Nintendo for adding in a lot of time-saving abilities to make traversing the reused overworld less inconvenient. Yet paradoxically, Nintendo still left in... No. Then they choose to put in some time-wasting, annoying-ass bullshit that adds zero gameplay value at all. Please, for the love of God, tell me why I still can't climb anything whenever it's raining out. How the fuck does this make the game more fun? Like, no one liked that. I still remember the first time I screamed at this game when I was in the middle of this side quest where I had to take this one chick, bring her out 50 feet to talk to this other guy in a tree. I go to talk to her to ask her to follow me. At the time, it was raining out. When I asked her, she said, Nah, f*** that s***, it's raining. Sick. Tight. No, that's cool. That's actually really-that's sick. I love that. I'm just gonna go fuck myself I know that may sound like a nitpick, but trust me There are so many little things like this in this game that'll just drive you nuts Again, thank God for emulation because I'm out of the f*** out of this game to get rid of like all that stuff anyways Anyways, once you wrap all that up We're treated to one final arm upgrade here which allows us to recall any object in the game back in time kind of like a live Undo button and it's absolutely not broken at all Just go right to the right to the next part. And despite some of my frustrations with certain aspects of the game mechanics, it is insane just how natural and intuitive they've made them feel within this pre-existing game world. Seriously, I cannot imagine even touching Breath of the Wild without any of these new mechanics. Which is even more of an impressive testament to their intuitive design, given just how much the controls in this game suck Lionel dick. I don't think Nintendo truly realizes how awesome they make pirating their games, because now, I can map my sprint button to one that actually makes sense instead of it being 180 degrees away from my jump button Which is why for some fucking reason the game's tutorial literally tells you to frame animation cancel your way out of throwing your sword by interrupting the trigger press by holding up on the d-pad to bring up this clunky ass Menu to select the thing you want to replace it with I should not be getting skill checked by this game's menus Also on that note who thought it was a good idea to have to individually attach items to every single individual arrow Every time you take a shot Especially when that menu to equip said item is like that Why isn't it this item? God? It's just who granted I'm not that bent out of shape about this whole thing because I installed about a thousand mods in this game for things that they Should have fixed in the first place again I shouldn't have to do that you guys have like six years after breath of the wild to like Incorporate a little player feedback and it's not even like you were crunching for some massive deadline Like you all have enough time to shade links balls But you can't put in like audio sliders? You can't even change like the text-whatever. Getting back to the game world, with all the abilities finally unlocked, we've graduated the tutorial island where Link throws his hands up on a hot stove, proving he's ready, only before one final cutscene where the Master Sword is recalled back in time for repairs and we're finally ready to freely explore the game world. Link, you must find me. Yup. Yeah, we're going back to Japanese. I am a firm believer that one of the most important hallmarks in any open-world adventure game is its ability to give you that feeling of What the fuck is that? I want to go find out only to get distracted by a thousand other things along the way and staring out into this game's Beautiful horizon does exactly that I'm serious spin a bottle pick whatever direction you want and you will find Something in the distance that'll pique your interest despite myself playing the game twice in the same app world I still was running out of map pins after just seeing cool stuff in the distance that I wanted to check out granted I'm sure the sense of discovery in this game goes twice as hard if you have a friend with a baseball bat and a good Back swing after playing breath of the wild, but even then they've added tons of new additions and Some new additions to the game world and a lot of the key areas from the last game have been switched up to justify you Making a revisit since it is reusing the same world as Breath of the Wild They at least give you a smorgasbord of options of getting around the whole thing to the point where I almost feel kind of bad For the horses these these things are fucking useless Especially since Nintendo made the brilliant move to not let them warp with you yet I can just build a flying ship like wherever I am I know it sounds dumb, but like it's kind of a bummer cuz there's like cool horsey shit I wanted to do in this game Zelda and horses is like a baller combination Especially now with all the new customization options where you can customize the tack on your horse But like the new saddles new bridles like the mains the colors the names and there's a ton of cool horses out there They're actually like cool things to find to discover I remember generally getting excited when I found like the horse God and some random ass lake and I was like awesome I got this awesome new horse I will never fucking use it which is something that could have been just completely fixed if you could just warp with your horse Did you see what I mean like this dumb stuff like like why didn't They just think this one through. So basically, 10 times out of 10, I would just take my ship bike with me, because not only is it faster than, like, any other means of transport, but it can also make you fly, skipping all the arduous climbing you do in the game, and can take you to this game's newest location, which are the sky. Looking into the clouds, these things practically spell adventure with all the unique shapes and sizes. I was stoked to go explore them to see, like, what type of crazy extra-optional dungeons you would find out there in the wild. But go explore on them and it feels like these things spell out fucking disappointment because those big-ass monoliths you saw in the distance Those aren't optional dungeons Those are a handful of reused minigames and not only that more than 70% of the islands here are copy pasted all over the map Don't get me wrong. There's still some really cool spots. I enjoyed seeing the views fighting the boss I enjoyed the death stars, the new low gravity areas were super cool, but I found myself just getting progressively less excited as I visited the same island over and over, fighting the same boss for like the 50th time, only to come to the conclusion that by far the best and biggest sky island in the game is the starting tutorial. That's f***ing gay! You guys made Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. There is no excuse for having better shit here in the sky. The biggest issue here is that 90% of the islands all share the same exact puzzle dynamics where you just have to hop from one platform to the other and get from point A to point B. And once you figure out how to build a few ghetto-ass flying machines, the whole thing just turns into tedium. The challenge of getting from point A to point B stops being fun when I already have the solution 20 hours ago. The fun of a puzzle comes from getting to the solution. Not just implementing it. In fact, just implementing the solution once you have it can be one of the most boring parts of it, because you already have it solved. It's just a matter of doing the busy work to get there. But the weirder thing is, Nintendo was so hyper-fixated on the Sky Islands for its marketing, but it was dead silent about the biggest addition to the map of the game, which are the depths. If you look at the map, you'll notice all these little red sphincters lining the world below. Jump down them and you'll arrive in a completely alien, pitch black underground that's the size of the entire game itself. Unlike the upstairs where you can easily spot landmarks in the distance and plot your direction, down here you're completely at the mercy of just lobbing glowsticks on the ground, assuming there even is one. This shit feels like adventure now! I swear, if the terrain itself doesn't kill you, there's by far the hardest enemies of the game down here that I'm more than glad to push your shit in. Get hit by any of them and they'll permanently uninstall any of the hearts you have on you until you get to the overworld or get to a shrine. But at the same time, you're surrounded by the best loot and weapons of the game, making this such a great risk-reward mechanic that justify all the tension. While it's by far the hardest part of the game, there's a morbid curiosity to all this as you find giant mines to plunder, Yiga strongholds to storm, complete with their own machines and bosses. My Jigga! The depths are an incredible addition to the game and are a blast to explore again for about 10 hours until you realize that most of it is just all the same. The world map is literally the same thing from above, just inverted. The light routes are all at the same spot as the shrines, and worst of all, the biomes never change depending on where you are. Exploring the points of interest are a blast, but outside of that, 80% of this is just filler and reskins and the charm starts to wear off. Why on earth they didn't bother to change the vibe of the biome depending on what part of the depths you're in is a befuddling decision because it makes the whole thing just feel like filler. And after I felt like I was burning out of all the cool things to see down here, I eventually did a majority of my exploring here on the-O-When it comes to the overworld, here's the thing. I can absolutely shit on this game's lack of like substantial side quest rewards, time-wasting bullshit, the absurd amount of grindy side quests. Rink! In order to save Hyrule, you must fetch me seven catalytic converters. But no matter how dedicated I was to any one objective, I'd constantly get sidetracked by a thousand different things, whether that's actually fun side quests, or fighting hydras and other badass enemies, visiting the cooler sky islands, exploring the depths, and most of all, just googling the location of badass armor sets, which I apparently can't upgrade because they would both be cool and fun. While it's not the most condensed action per square meter world, you will guarantee get distracted by something fun no matter which direction you pick. For example, I was making my way towards... I don't remember. While after detouring to fight some enemies, I happened to find this fruity trumpet player stuck in a hole, where I had to float him and his wagon out of it. It was a fun distraction I could have easily missed that spiced up my journey, despite him constantly moaning in my ear. Oh hell no, this guy just came. But keep talking to him a little bit further and you realize he's one of the key characters that helps you unlock the fairies that upgrade your threads. So guess where I'm off to now? And while I'm on my way, I might as well hit up the stables and talk to the people there with red exclamation points above their head and see what points of interest they're going to point me toward and all the quests that are there. And now I've completely forgotten what I was even doing in the first place. And no matter how much I shit in this game, that's pretty cool, man. That's fun. That's good game design in my book, right? And even when you do have to participate in the insane amount of grindy bullshit hunting, you can circumvent almost all of it through just item duping, where you take whatever's in your hand and multiply it as many times as you want, a virtually an old speedrunning strat created by some guy from Nazareth. I don't blame anyone for wanting to exploit item inventories or rupees, because the economy in this game is downright broken. And all those little battery upgrades are a grindfest that make crafting iron daggers seem efficient. But no matter how many hours of legitimate or illegitimate fun you've had in this game, if you want to make actual progress in it, we're going to have to eventually tackle the main quest. Right after you're released from the tutorial island, you're technically free to do whatever you want, although we still don't have our paraglider, so to get that we're going to have to kick off the main quest by visiting an old friend of ours called Pura. Lord, we must stay focused. After reuniting briefly, she instructs us that we have to meet with some captain of the guard so we can figure out our next steps. And speaking of steps, get ready to take a fucking lot of them, because now we have to go- All the way to the top of the mountain just to talk to this guy who after seeing Zelda show up and disappear Basically just tells you to go back down to the original person that sends you up there to talk to him The only reason I'm bringing this up is because the game takes this formula and repeats it about a thousand times But before we leave here to go save Zelda We're instructed that just like in Breath of the Wild we have to go save the four corners of the map again Where this time around the Rito people left their AC on for too long, the water tribe had their plumbing burst, the blue-collar miners are all hooked on ketamine again, and the Sand Women are- Fucking learning to drive or something I forget now I don't even mind that they're reusing the breath of the wild formula But what really feels like a spit in the face is the sheer amount of shameless padding they used to drag it out to just Painful degrees visit any of the four areas and it's the same shit over again It really is just like the link playing telephone with 20 different people that all just want you to talk to different people so you can Go back to talk to the original person you talk to to actually just get to the dungeon But once you and the chosen sage get clearance you now have to make this arduously painful journey Every single time you want to get to a dungeon It's repeated at least four times in the game and offers practically nothing new in terms of gameplay Although the trampoline ships at the very end of that one place are pretty fun Nice job And every single time the sage is gonna have this epiphany moment where the old sage just sort of communicates them to go to the dungeon And they act like you haven't seen this done three times before already Reach for the officers weapon And it gets even worse, by the time you get your way to the end of the dungeon, it rewards you with the same exact cutscene no matter what dungeon you're in. Genuinely, copy-pasted, same exact cutscene. Zero additional lore. No backstory on the specific sage you're talking to, no explanation on how they got their unique power or any form of character building. I should never feel the desire to skip the cutscene at the very end of a major dungeon. I'd like nothing more than to smash the Demon King. That's a little gay. Hold on. The reason this bums me out so much is that if you pull back the layers of the padding here, underneath it all is probably one of the greatest stories ever told in a Zelda game that isn't a hentai. The whole story of the game is told through these flashbacks that are scattered all around Hyrule, and these cutscenes are some of the most hype shit I have seen in the series. Seriously, the voice acting is probably one of the best things to happen to this franchise. Ganon actually feels like a scary motherfucker this time around. On these lands long, long ago. They must have seemed to be gods. But, I've drowned Azora, I've stoned Agoron, and I'm about to drop a hard R on your entire kingdom. This shit ain't nothing to me, man. I'll kill you, you stupid piece of shit. This game actually has plot twists, and they're good. The whole act of pulling the Master Sword in this game was done in such a clever way, it'll just completely take your breath away. And this is hands down... No contest, the best Ganon fight in the entire series, I will die on that hill. I can't put it on the screen because of YouTube's policy against homicide, because Nintendo fucking killed it on this one. Assuming you didn't watch the Geoglyphs out of order, because for some retarded reason, you can go from watching cutscene number one, to accidentally finding cutscene number ten, spoiling the absolute piss out of everything. It happened to me, It happened to about everyone else I know who played the game and it sucks. For a game that dumbs down the main quest to an insulting degree to make sure you don't miss any crucial story point out of order in each of the four quadrants, how do they not let-How did this one slip through the cracks? I don't know why they didn't make it where you just find each story cutscene and just unlock the next one as you go, which could have been so easily fixed by having each geoglyph just unlock the next sequence in the order of cutscenes. They are literally numbered! For a reason! You see what I'm saying here? With like every new brilliant edition, they will just drop the ball on some of the most obvious shit. Like why do I have to deal with my sprint running out when I'm not in the middle of combat? Why don't the horses warp with the player? Why is Nintendo taking over 30 seconds of unskippable text to tell me what a fucking headshot is? Why do I still have no ability to change the weather and just get held hostage by the rain? How did the bow item sorting make it out of beta? How did you make the new hero abilities suck so much worse than the last game? And worse than all of this combined? How after six years can I still not pet the fucking dogs? That is inexcusable. Put all those quality control issues aside, what about the most integral aspect to every Zelda game that's ever existed? I've been saving this can of worms until the very end because it's about time we talked about the du-I don't know if you remember, but Breath of the Wild was pretty much universally spit-roasted for having some of the most watered-down dungeons in the franchise. They were all just an amalgamation of five or six mini puzzles glued together in a random order that all shared the same coat of paint and the same copy-paste boss. But nearing the launch of Tears of the Kingdom, rumors were spreading around that they were actually redoubling efforts to bolster them in Tears of the Kingdom. So what did they do? They listened. They actually listened. They went back to the drawing board, they heard all the criticism, they spent about 20 minutes improving them, and we wound up with these four pieces of shit. Granted, I'm being hyperbolic, they're way better than the ones in Breath of the Wild. This time around they actually have their own textures unique to each dungeon. But setting the bar at not dog shit is-it doesn't mean you're good. Well, yes, they are a major step up from its predecessors, and I applaud their efforts. they're still bottlenecked by their stubborn open-world design being nothing more than just a handful of independent puzzles. Here's the thing. In a game that's so open-ended and non-linear, almost to a fault, implementing a linear dungeon would have added such a refreshing addition to give some structure to your adventure. It's called Contrast. It's the reason you don't eat Skittles right before drinking the Monster, because then all of a sudden you're going to start tasting all the ingredients with over eight syllables. But in Tears of the Kingdom, instead of having one coherent dungeon that evolves as you venture through it as you try to understand how all the rooms work together, here you're just getting a couple of fractured, one-dimensional chores that don't add any complexity outside of just flipping on a fucking light switch. Play any other dungeon from a Zelda game and there's a reason you'll have a unique, memorable experience because you're forced to understand the layout. Take for example the Skyward Sword Sandship versus the Tears of the Kingdom Skyship. In TOTK, you just solve individual challenges in any order to get your way. But in Skyward Sword, not only are you dealing with individual challenges from room to room, but you're also having to critically take stock of its blueprints, phasing between different time periods while also having to keep track of your location relative to the different floors you're on. The sheer shape of these dungeons play a larger role in how you figure them all out. Yet when I get to the Water Temple in Tears of the Kingdom, all I see are a bunch of floating little platforms that have no relevance to each other at all. Cause that's what they fucking are! I'm not saying they're the worst things ever. In fact, for the first time in Zelda history, I found myself actually enjoying a Fire Temple. There was fun to be had, despite their relative shortness. The bosses were a major upgrade this time around. This bloopy dude was awesome and Kol'Garav fucking ripped. Despite these dungeons feeling better than the ones that were in Breath of the Wild, they still felt somehow worse than like the fake dungeons in Super Smash Brothers Melee. Because they still just felt like four or five shrines tacked together. Speaking of which, shrines are back again and we can already take a big sigh of relief for it, or Breath of the Wild, I should take that out. Because they're a major upgrade from the last game. With far more interesting puzzles that can all be tackled a million different ways. But just like in Breath of the Wild, their aesthetics never change and it kind of gets me wondering, given the game's lack of temples and dungeons, Why the fuck are there still 120 of them? Not only does this make them less special whenever you find them, because there's just so many of them across the map, but now you've taken resources away from the actual developers for making optional dungeons and temples. Some of the best moments from games like Elden Ring or Skyrim came from finding hidden temples and optional labyrinths that you could have easily passed by if you didn't keep an eye out for them. There was so much potential here to sneak away some classic Zelda-sized dungeons to reward going that extra mile. I understand why there'd be less of them in the first game considering they had to make the whole world But there's zero fucking excuse this time around just pawn off 50 of those shrines for any dungeon That's half as cool as any of the creative ones from Twilight Princess While there are some great shrines and sky islands that do go the extra mile They're few and far between leaving the player with just a few maze Labyrinths that were basically ported over from Breath of the Wild all with the same solutions. Those don't count Fortunately, the game is still carried by its phenomenal gameplay, and it's amazing just how many fun hours you can sink into this game despite all of its shortcomings, which is no small list. Some of my best memories from this year came from me just kicking it with the Discord bros while we were all playing Tears of the Kingdom at the same time. And I'm gonna say something crazy, alright? I think this game would have been twice as fun had they put in multiplayer. I can't believe I'm saying that as a Zelda fan, but after playing a hacked version of Ocarina of Time with the same guys... Don't jump on that thing. I don't listen to anyone. Err. Whoops. Oh my god, it would be so fun. And it's not like they can't do it. They managed to do it in Animal Crossing, and I'm sure there's some random fucker out there who will make a mod for it. It probably already exists! And that's not even the craziest thing I'm gonna say about this game. Because as I was putting in hour after hour into this thing, I kept noticing something wasn't quite right. There was something missing from this game that's been in every other Zelda game, and it was kind of driving me nuts. It's the vibes. Vibes are off. And in a Zelda game, that is a sin. And I think the biggest contributor to this, in my personal opinion, is the music. Bring it on! The music in this game is good. I like it. It's nice. It's subtle. I love the little... All the little rinky-dink piano moments. All the little Chinese-ass sounding villages all sound pretty. They're good. They're objectively good. But that shit ain't Zelda. This is all music that would equally as well fit into any indie game about discovering your bisexuality or something. Because when you think Zelda, you think of adventure in bold, capitalized, impactful- It is epic to the most unironic degree. So fuck your pots, fuck your grass, grab a stick, grab your shit, because we're going out into the middle of the cul-de-sac to have an adventure. This is a game series that's not about minimalism, it's not about rinky-dink shit, it's a game that makes grown-ass businessmen feel like fourth graders going adventuring in their neighbor's backyard. This is a game about exploring and saving new worlds, experiencing gut-wrenching sorrow and having the courage to withstand it all. And if you don't believe me, go and play any other fucking Zelda game that's ever been made. There's a reason every YouTuber in 2016 made that the importance of music and video games Cause that shit's important! It colors the lens you use to view the game, it changes your perspective It takes any emotion you could experience in a game and turns it up to 11 When I play a video game, I wanna feel that shit, I wanna come out a changed person And I'm not even saying Tears of the Kingdom doesn't have that, it has some great moments of course But any of these other games just mug the soundtrack in this game Especially since it's reusing 90% of it And I can't even remember the remaining 10%! Making it even harder for me to enjoy the newer additions to the ToDK soundtrack, because I can only remember a handful of them. And that's the villages, the stables, and that one Rito remix that reminded me of the game that had 30 times the amount of bangers in it, and it ran on a f***ing cube! Which just reminds me of the soundtrack this game could have easily had. Now hold on, maybe you're thinking, oh this is just Nostalgia talking because he grew up with all the Zelda games So clearly he likes that music more. Alright, well get this. Literally right after I wrapped up Tears of the Kingdom, a friend of mine started streaming Link's Awakening, a game I've never played. I haven't even seen any like footage from this thing. He starts playing it and within 10 seconds I'm hearing a song that sounds more Zelda than anything I have heard in this game. This sounds like Zelda! So I think I'm coming at this from a pretty unbiased perspective. The reason I'm losing my mind about this is that Nintendo is literally owner of the most successful franchise in capitalism. This is a franchise known for making better albums for just consoles changing save data than most billboard topping artists. Yet they can't afford a couple nickels that would cost them to just commission any of the thousands of amazing video game composers they have at the ready to just make a whole new soundtrack that would have blown everyone's socks off. There's no excuse for this. Even the game doesn't seem to respect its own soundtrack, because when you're going through the dungeon and the music's scaling with each area you unlock, if you even make eye contact with any of the oppozoids around you, the music just completely drops out to be replaced with some generic let's tussle music, completely stepping on the vibe of this whole area. Oh, cool. Yeah, let's get sick of the good music anyway. The last time they ever did this was in Twilight Princess where they just fucked up one of the best and most emotional scenes in the entire series for the same reason. Like literally an unskippable ad would have been better here. Tired of the interrupting enemy music for just five dollars? I cannot believe they would make that same mistake twice. It just makes me feel like they don't care about the game that much. I know you may be just thinking, oh, he's just hating on the entire soundtrack. Not at all. There's some brilliant themes in this game. Colgaris alone is enough to justify all the other lackluster boss themes. The music they used for the trailers and the dungeons were all A plus tier. But that accounts for about 1% of all the time you're playing this game and listening to the soundtrack. Maybe I am blowing things out of proportion here. Because no matter how much I bitch and moan about this game, there is still an incredible experience for just about anyone who wants to pick it up. There's no Zelda game that's launched without controversy. But at the same time, I've never played a Zelda game that I haven't enjoyed. With all that said, if this video tickled your asshole, I've got three others just like it that are arguably even better than this one. If you want to be a producer in the video yourself and get your name up on the wall, I've got a Patreon for that too. And bonus, I'm actually coming out with a whole new series where I'm uploading exclusive content to Patreon and YouTube members. That's going to be coming out really shortly. I'm really... Excited to launch that it's been a blast guys. Sorry for taking so long I've got another video already in the works. That's gonna be coming out on the

Whether that's you walking onto shit, seeing a day or night cycle, or being in an open world, that all goes back to Zelda. This series is everywhere, and it's so beloved that its own logo became like a whole ass dog whistle between gamers to identify each other. And it still is to this day.

And if you're still somehow not convinced, this one game alone in the franchise practically spawned the video essay. At this point, Zelda isn't even a video game, Zelda is video games. UGH!

However, despite its massive fanbase, after Zelda's introduction into the third dimension, the franchise would really struggle to meet Nintendo's internalized sales metrics, to the point where they were this close to putting the entire series on ice. Mainly because Nintendo just can't get out of their own way when it comes to business decisions, and I made a whole video on this over here. But 20 years after Ocarina of Time's release, we would witness this franchise drop its most successful and ambitious title ever, 3x-ing the sales of its prior bestseller, generating $2 billion in revenue.

That's a-that's like a million dollars. Breath of the Wild reviewed phenomenally well, and would grow a cult following that would rival those of the people who like orbit Elon Musk reply tweets with like AI imp-oh it's fucking weird. This game was hailed as the second coming of Michael Jackson, and for good reason.

However, people started to notice that there was something kinda off about this game. And if you had anything to say in the matter, you could... You could go ahead and come right up here. Yeah, mic's on. At the time, to say anything negative about this game was considered blasphemy.

But just because you make something unspeakable, it doesn't make opinions go away. They just go underground where they can fester and echo, and that's exactly what happened here. Worst of all...

A lot of it started to make sense. People started grumbling about the dungeons in the game, kind of... kind of sucking dick.

People were frustrated with the aggressive weapon degradation, the lack of substantial cities, bosses, things to explore, rewards, and all the other same things we've heard a thousand times before in every other YouTube video. I have seen dead horses beat more than this topic. But fuck it, one more swing can't hurt, because you're gonna hear me say it all again. But then all of the sudden, the fastest six years of our lives slide by, and Nintendo's already teasing us with Tears of the Kingdom, The new big-ass Zelda game coming to console, although it's rumored to have the same executive role from Breath of the Wild, and for a game franchise that fundamentally relies on adventuring and exploring, uh, isn't really checking off that whole, like, adventuring and exploring box. Worse yet, the whole new zazzy edition of Sky Islands isn't really helping the whole trust-me-bro-it's-not-DLC allegations, which at this point are spreading like grass fire, and worse yet, the last game to have Sky Islands kinda f***ed those up too, so people are rightfully asking each other, what the f*** is this game?

See to some people, they saw Tears of the Kingdom and thought it was either a sequel to Breath of the Wild, or just a DLC expansion. It's actually neither of those things. In reality, this game has completely and utterly replaced one of the greatest selling Nintendo games of all time, while somehow making the original feel like an early access rough draft with more wavy lines and my own scripts. Granted, it's far from perfect, trust me you're gonna see me lose my shit in a minute, but this thing is almost everything Breath of the Wild should have been, complete with some of the most impressive gameplay mechanics I've seen in the last 10 years of gaming, while somehow running off the hardware of like an- iPhone 6. How does it do this?

What does it fix? What does it definitely not fix? Is it truly as bad as all these other YouTubers are saying, or are they all just smoking crack?

To answer these questions, we have to give this thing a little bit of c-The year is 2017. Nintendo's finally released their highly anticipated first open world Zelda game since like the pre-Cambrian era, and you can even take it on the go. At the very same time, I was about to go on my first ever international tour with my band. So don't shut up about that enough. Where I'd be living out of a bus for the next two months with nothing to do.

I needed this thing in my life. It would chase after it like a white girl during an Adderall shortage, okay? I must have spent the amount of money of like a third world country's GDP to get my hands on a freshly scalped Switch and a copy of Breath of the Wild.

I get on the road, I boot it up, and about 30 hours of gameplay later, I come to the conclusion that I'm not having fucking fun. What is wrong with me? I'm over here questioning my entire identity like I can quote like every Zelda dubstep rap and Smosh video to date Do I even enjoy Zelda games anymore? Did something change within me from like the six years between Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild that made me some like Miserable jaded asshole who no longer enjoys fun? Nah, I just like my shit breaking 24-7 To me, the entire game felt a mile wide, but an inch deep, making me feel like a bit of a dumbass for coming into this thing with my scooby gear.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a phenomenal game on many levels. Hell, the combat alone smokes like fucking anything in the series. But at the time, I didn't feel that grand adventure.

I felt directionless and apathetic. Anytime I found cool shit in the wilderness, it would always break on me, only to be replaced with twigs and pot lids, disincentivizing me from even enjoying the game's great combat. But what's worse than all of that, I still can't remember a single room from any of the dungeons.

I can't remember a single shrine out of the 120 that were in the game. And worst of all, I still don't even remember the plot of the game. Aside from that one cutscene of Zelda's ass.

They nailed that one. No Zelda game has done this to me, and never before have I felt such a strong compulsion to want to check my phone throughout the entirety of this game. And it turns out, a lot of Core Zelda fans felt the same exact way.

Why is that you ask? Because at the heart of it, Breath of the Wild is the exact opposite of the Core Zelda approach we've all grown familiar with over the last 30 years, training its more linear epic journeys and intimate locales for a much more minimalistic yet freely expansive world. Weirdly enough, I actually replayed the game on the Switch where I just turned off the weapon degradation and stamina and I had a blast playing it on like a 36 hour drive on A much later tour cuz I don't show up about those enough point being I went into this game with good faith intentions And it's just not what I and many other Zelda fans wanted out of the game I bring this up to see as a neutral party on Breath of the Wild You can trust me when I say that tears of the kingdom It's actually fucking gas!

This thing is basically Breath of the Wild packet punched in almost all the right ways. Weapon degradation actually makes sense now. The new building mechanics can be a full-price game in and of itself. The reused world feels brand new to me because I've apparently forgotten all of it.

This number on the game actually has a story and it's by far one of the best in the entire series. Making me wonder why the fuck is it any of this shit in Breath of the Wild? That said, it's not perfect.

There are just some fucking stupid ass decisions they made in this game that completely kneecap it from being a true 10 out of 10. But before we can get into the game itself, it is my genuine pleasure to announce the sponsorship of this video that I've been trying to get for about a year and a half now, which is Manscaped. The fuck is that logo? If you've been around the channel, then you know that I only take sponsored ad reads if I like the product and use it personally.

Or they just bribe me. But for the longest time I remember hearing Manscaped thrown around through every YouTube ad and podcast bit, wondering if it's......you know, like......that good? It's that good.

I have used exactly three different body trimmers, the same three that everyone steals from Walmart, and every time I wrap up down there, it always leaves me looking like I'm on my period. At least until I tried the Lawn Mower 4.0. Actually, hold up. Slight correction, I've taken so long on this video that they've managed to come out with the Lawn Mower 5.0.

Which is somehow even better than the 4.0. This thing is insane. You can just straight up just...

It's f***ing great. I even tried to cut myself with this thing. I put the small scar they had on there, I took it point blank to my sh**.

It would not slice it. This thing was able to shave parts of me that I didn't even know I had. Oh my god, there's two of them. Now, Manscaped can be this giant PDF of all their talking points and their technology with their ceramic coating, nano fiber, I don't...

You don't care. I don't-for all I care this thing runs off of soul gems because I swear to God this thing is black magic It's got a flashlight. It's waterproof.

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I've been reaching out to you guys for years now I am forever a lifelong fan I think you will be too. So with that said Back on to the video. Going back to Tears of the Kingdom unlike the first game Which just sort of had you get up and go This time around it slows down the pace where you're exploring the caves beneath Hyrule Castle with Zelda and a metric shit ton of hearts Well, she just kind of rattles off exposition at a very Nintendo pace. We'll keep going Coming up from beneath Hyrule Castle. T-t-t-today, Junior!

In any other game, I'd normally enjoy this if she didn't sound like she was constantly on the verge of tears. Of the kingdom. You continue spelunking around here with Zelda before you accidentally bump into, and subsequently resurrect the game's newest and by far most badass villain. Dehydrated Ganon.

Where the Master Sword completely snaps, Link loses an arm and Zelda almost falls to her death before save scumming some prehistoric autosave. And what has to be one of the shortest refractory periods in Zelda history, Ganon's just back again and more powerful than ever. He busts a nut so hard it sends half of Hyrule into the sky, causing chaos across the lands and spawning in a bunch of new Sky Islands. Some undisclosed time later. You wake up on the first of the Sky Islands only to find the games pulled a Metroid on you, not only leaving you with the busted Master Sword and a bullshit three hearts, but you now have a bright new shiny green prosthetic right arm which is going to be the source of all your powers.

It's been gifted to us by this long dead ancient goat bro named Raru, who's going to loosely guide us through the game's tutorial. It was I that spoke to you earlier. That arm originally belonged to me. Now give it back.

And right off the bat, I'm stoked they're finally adding in new species to this franchise instead of just recycling the same old fish, air, and rock people all over again. They even added in some new minorities this time around. Nice job.

I always thought this game was at its best when it was adding in new fantasy type characters like, like Twilight Princess and... Eh, well you already know why. And the first thing I noticed just taking my first step off the Sky Island here is just how fucking good this game looks. Oh my god. Like, listen, I love shitting on Nintendo more than anyone else here.

But you got I gotta hand it to him like this game looks so pretty Despite it running at like two frames per second, but you know Not my problem. Man, look at this. Look at this sunset.

Yeah, I mean, I'm-Nick, this and a Capri Sun, bro. But it's not like I really-It's light. I don't know.

Now, upon visiting your very first shrine, you're granted with the game's major selling point, which are the glue mechanics. And look, I'll be honest. We all saw the advertisements for the new Ultra Hand mechanic, and I started to get a little bit nervous. Because within seconds of this game's release, everyone on the internet had seemed to already figure out how to make beings to surpass Metal Gear. Whether that's slot machines, robots, autonomous mechs that all have like- Freakin orbital laser level attacks.

I love it Meanwhile, I'm over here throughout the entirety of the game still to this day trying to figure out which end of the fans suck or blow I feel like I'm doing both see I personally am NOT a massive fan of the whole open-world Crafty game genre aside from Minecraft and I was worried that I'd be missing out on a larger part of the experience of the game But not having an engineering degree in thing bobs and doodads Not that I don't Pretty good at the blocks. But the crazy thing is, you don't need any of it. It is shockingly amazing just how intuitive the building mechanics are in this game, while still not sacrificing any of the complexity of the later puzzles. And if you're not convinced, you can break this game with just two fans and a steering stick, in what me and my friends like to call... Shitbike.

God bless-God bless Shitbike, man. This thing's gonna save you hours of just tedious bullshit, like all the pre-gaming to get to the dungeons. Oh my god, it's so- I'm gonna eat half myself. Anyways, once you've killed about five hours building random doodads and figuring out just how many ways you can fuck up building a boat, you'll eventually make your way to shrine number two. It's here you'll find the game's second biggest mix-up here called the fuse mechanic, allowing Link to weld anything in his environment to whatever base, weapon, or shield he's holding.

And I mean literally anything, whether that's a boulder, a tree trunk, severed heads, limbs, a 98 dodge drink, fucking anything you want. This has to be... One of the smartest decisions in this game because it completely fixes the one issue everyone had in Breath of the Wild Which is the weapons had the same durability as the glass bones from that one dude from Spongebob Oh, no As a result players were disincentivized to engage in the game's combat just because you wouldn't want to burn the good gear you had on you There's even enemies in that game that you couldn't kill if you didn't have enough Weapon ammo stored upon you because it would all shatter before you even get the thing to half health and I understand some arguments say it's A balancing mechanic so you don't get too much good stuff early on Here's the thing. I literally fucking cheated in the game, and I turned off weapon degradation.

I straight up had way more fun playing the game on that version. Not only did this allow me to engage in fights guilt-free, I'd also get excited when I'd find new gear and upgrades because I actually get to keep it. And I'd still get my ass kicked in fights. But Tears of the Kingdom solves this problem by letting you build baller-ass weapons out of the garbage around you. What's even better, though, is that all the enemies drop monster parts like drill bits and hammers that are on their head, which directly correspond to the difficulty of the enemy, meaning the harder things to kill...

The better shit you get to make better weapons, which is like the-Th-th-th-that's how you-that's how you do it! You were finally incentivizing combat! Why the fuck wasn't this in Breath of the Wild?!

Not only does this make the weapon degradation actually make sense, it's actually a fun mechanic now because whenever your stuff breaks, you have an opportunity to just build something cool in its place. And the game lets you be creative with whatever you want to make, whether that's whips, scythes, flames, swords, fucking... transmissions, like...

The most crazy thing to me though is that despite this thing being so well thought out, they completely blundered when it came to fusing anything to your shield. If you attach any zone eye part that has a function like a fire hydrant or a flamethrower to a shield, even a f***ing flashlight, the shield will disintegrate in like five seconds because it's like using up too much power. I don't know.

It's just crazy to me. Like, how did you guys not think this through? It shouldn't take some idiot YouTuber who can't even spell calendar half the time to point out the obvious flaws in your game.

Like here's an example. Why do the shields still disintegrate whenever you snowboard on them down a hill? Dang man, that's some ghetto ride you got rolling though. That's just a pure unfun mechanic No one likes that.

An iron shield that can tank claymore bushes should be able to last longer than an actual snowboard Anyways, anyways while you're on the starting island You'll eventually make your way to the third shrine where you unlock the ability to just straight up phase through ceilings above you. Which is a super handy mechanic that just lets you save time by not having to backtrack out of things like caves and buildings and just lets you pop up on the roof. I will applaud Nintendo for adding in a lot of time-saving abilities to make traversing the reused overworld less inconvenient. Yet paradoxically, Nintendo still left in...

No. Then they choose to put in some time-wasting, annoying-ass bullshit that adds zero gameplay value at all. Please, for the love of God, tell me why I still can't climb anything whenever it's raining out. How the fuck does this make the game more fun? Like, no one liked that.

I still remember the first time I screamed at this game when I was in the middle of this side quest where I had to take this one chick, bring her out 50 feet to talk to this other guy in a tree. I go to talk to her to ask her to follow me. At the time, it was raining out. When I asked her, she said, Nah, f*** that s***, it's raining. Sick.

Tight. No, that's cool. That's actually really-that's sick. I love that.

I'm just gonna go fuck myself I know that may sound like a nitpick, but trust me There are so many little things like this in this game that'll just drive you nuts Again, thank God for emulation because I'm out of the f*** out of this game to get rid of like all that stuff anyways Anyways, once you wrap all that up We're treated to one final arm upgrade here which allows us to recall any object in the game back in time kind of like a live Undo button and it's absolutely not broken at all Just go right to the right to the next part. And despite some of my frustrations with certain aspects of the game mechanics, it is insane just how natural and intuitive they've made them feel within this pre-existing game world. Seriously, I cannot imagine even touching Breath of the Wild without any of these new mechanics. Which is even more of an impressive testament to their intuitive design, given just how much the controls in this game suck Lionel dick.

I don't think Nintendo truly realizes how awesome they make pirating their games, because now, I can map my sprint button to one that actually makes sense instead of it being 180 degrees away from my jump button Which is why for some fucking reason the game's tutorial literally tells you to frame animation cancel your way out of throwing your sword by interrupting the trigger press by holding up on the d-pad to bring up this clunky ass Menu to select the thing you want to replace it with I should not be getting skill checked by this game's menus Also on that note who thought it was a good idea to have to individually attach items to every single individual arrow Every time you take a shot Especially when that menu to equip said item is like that Why isn't it this item? God? It's just who granted I'm not that bent out of shape about this whole thing because I installed about a thousand mods in this game for things that they Should have fixed in the first place again I shouldn't have to do that you guys have like six years after breath of the wild to like Incorporate a little player feedback and it's not even like you were crunching for some massive deadline Like you all have enough time to shade links balls But you can't put in like audio sliders?

You can't even change like the text-whatever. Getting back to the game world, with all the abilities finally unlocked, we've graduated the tutorial island where Link throws his hands up on a hot stove, proving he's ready, only before one final cutscene where the Master Sword is recalled back in time for repairs and we're finally ready to freely explore the game world. Link, you must find me.

Yup. Yeah, we're going back to Japanese. I am a firm believer that one of the most important hallmarks in any open-world adventure game is its ability to give you that feeling of What the fuck is that? I want to go find out only to get distracted by a thousand other things along the way and staring out into this game's Beautiful horizon does exactly that I'm serious spin a bottle pick whatever direction you want and you will find Something in the distance that'll pique your interest despite myself playing the game twice in the same app world I still was running out of map pins after just seeing cool stuff in the distance that I wanted to check out granted I'm sure the sense of discovery in this game goes twice as hard if you have a friend with a baseball bat and a good Back swing after playing breath of the wild, but even then they've added tons of new additions and Some new additions to the game world and a lot of the key areas from the last game have been switched up to justify you Making a revisit since it is reusing the same world as Breath of the Wild They at least give you a smorgasbord of options of getting around the whole thing to the point where I almost feel kind of bad For the horses these these things are fucking useless Especially since Nintendo made the brilliant move to not let them warp with you yet I can just build a flying ship like wherever I am I know it sounds dumb, but like it's kind of a bummer cuz there's like cool horsey shit I wanted to do in this game Zelda and horses is like a baller combination Especially now with all the new customization options where you can customize the tack on your horse But like the new saddles new bridles like the mains the colors the names and there's a ton of cool horses out there They're actually like cool things to find to discover I remember generally getting excited when I found like the horse God and some random ass lake and I was like awesome I got this awesome new horse I will never fucking use it which is something that could have been just completely fixed if you could just warp with your horse Did you see what I mean like this dumb stuff like like why didn't They just think this one through.

So basically, 10 times out of 10, I would just take my ship bike with me, because not only is it faster than, like, any other means of transport, but it can also make you fly, skipping all the arduous climbing you do in the game, and can take you to this game's newest location, which are the sky. Looking into the clouds, these things practically spell adventure with all the unique shapes and sizes. I was stoked to go explore them to see, like, what type of crazy extra-optional dungeons you would find out there in the wild. But go explore on them and it feels like these things spell out fucking disappointment because those big-ass monoliths you saw in the distance Those aren't optional dungeons Those are a handful of reused minigames and not only that more than 70% of the islands here are copy pasted all over the map Don't get me wrong.

There's still some really cool spots. I enjoyed seeing the views fighting the boss I enjoyed the death stars, the new low gravity areas were super cool, but I found myself just getting progressively less excited as I visited the same island over and over, fighting the same boss for like the 50th time, only to come to the conclusion that by far the best and biggest sky island in the game is the starting tutorial. That's f***ing gay!

You guys made Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. There is no excuse for having better shit here in the sky. The biggest issue here is that 90% of the islands all share the same exact puzzle dynamics where you just have to hop from one platform to the other and get from point A to point B. And once you figure out how to build a few ghetto-ass flying machines, the whole thing just turns into tedium.

The challenge of getting from point A to point B stops being fun when I already have the solution 20 hours ago. The fun of a puzzle comes from getting to the solution. Not just implementing it. In fact, just implementing the solution once you have it can be one of the most boring parts of it, because you already have it solved. It's just a matter of doing the busy work to get there.

But the weirder thing is, Nintendo was so hyper-fixated on the Sky Islands for its marketing, but it was dead silent about the biggest addition to the map of the game, which are the depths. If you look at the map, you'll notice all these little red sphincters lining the world below. Jump down them and you'll arrive in a completely alien, pitch black underground that's the size of the entire game itself.

Unlike the upstairs where you can easily spot landmarks in the distance and plot your direction, down here you're completely at the mercy of just lobbing glowsticks on the ground, assuming there even is one. This shit feels like adventure now! I swear, if the terrain itself doesn't kill you, there's by far the hardest enemies of the game down here that I'm more than glad to push your shit in.

Get hit by any of them and they'll permanently uninstall any of the hearts you have on you until you get to the overworld or get to a shrine. But at the same time, you're surrounded by the best loot and weapons of the game, making this such a great risk-reward mechanic that justify all the tension. While it's by far the hardest part of the game, there's a morbid curiosity to all this as you find giant mines to plunder, Yiga strongholds to storm, complete with their own machines and bosses.

My Jigga! The depths are an incredible addition to the game and are a blast to explore again for about 10 hours until you realize that most of it is just all the same. The world map is literally the same thing from above, just inverted.

The light routes are all at the same spot as the shrines, and worst of all, the biomes never change depending on where you are. Exploring the points of interest are a blast, but outside of that, 80% of this is just filler and reskins and the charm starts to wear off. Why on earth they didn't bother to change the vibe of the biome depending on what part of the depths you're in is a befuddling decision because it makes the whole thing just feel like filler.

And after I felt like I was burning out of all the cool things to see down here, I eventually did a majority of my exploring here on the-O-When it comes to the overworld, here's the thing. I can absolutely shit on this game's lack of like substantial side quest rewards, time-wasting bullshit, the absurd amount of grindy side quests. Rink! In order to save Hyrule, you must fetch me seven catalytic converters. But no matter how dedicated I was to any one objective, I'd constantly get sidetracked by a thousand different things, whether that's actually fun side quests, or fighting hydras and other badass enemies, visiting the cooler sky islands, exploring the depths, and most of all, just googling the location of badass armor sets, which I apparently can't upgrade because they would both be cool and fun.

While it's not the most condensed action per square meter world, you will guarantee get distracted by something fun no matter which direction you pick. For example, I was making my way towards... I don't remember. While after detouring to fight some enemies, I happened to find this fruity trumpet player stuck in a hole, where I had to float him and his wagon out of it.

It was a fun distraction I could have easily missed that spiced up my journey, despite him constantly moaning in my ear. Oh hell no, this guy just came. But keep talking to him a little bit further and you realize he's one of the key characters that helps you unlock the fairies that upgrade your threads. So guess where I'm off to now?

And while I'm on my way, I might as well hit up the stables and talk to the people there with red exclamation points above their head and see what points of interest they're going to point me toward and all the quests that are there. And now I've completely forgotten what I was even doing in the first place. And no matter how much I shit in this game, that's pretty cool, man. That's fun.

That's good game design in my book, right? And even when you do have to participate in the insane amount of grindy bullshit hunting, you can circumvent almost all of it through just item duping, where you take whatever's in your hand and multiply it as many times as you want, a virtually an old speedrunning strat created by some guy from Nazareth. I don't blame anyone for wanting to exploit item inventories or rupees, because the economy in this game is downright broken.

And all those little battery upgrades are a grindfest that make crafting iron daggers seem efficient. But no matter how many hours of legitimate or illegitimate fun you've had in this game, if you want to make actual progress in it, we're going to have to eventually tackle the main quest. Right after you're released from the tutorial island, you're technically free to do whatever you want, although we still don't have our paraglider, so to get that we're going to have to kick off the main quest by visiting an old friend of ours called Pura. Lord, we must stay focused. After reuniting briefly, she instructs us that we have to meet with some captain of the guard so we can figure out our next steps.

And speaking of steps, get ready to take a fucking lot of them, because now we have to go- All the way to the top of the mountain just to talk to this guy who after seeing Zelda show up and disappear Basically just tells you to go back down to the original person that sends you up there to talk to him The only reason I'm bringing this up is because the game takes this formula and repeats it about a thousand times But before we leave here to go save Zelda We're instructed that just like in Breath of the Wild we have to go save the four corners of the map again Where this time around the Rito people left their AC on for too long, the water tribe had their plumbing burst, the blue-collar miners are all hooked on ketamine again, and the Sand Women are- Fucking learning to drive or something I forget now I don't even mind that they're reusing the breath of the wild formula But what really feels like a spit in the face is the sheer amount of shameless padding they used to drag it out to just Painful degrees visit any of the four areas and it's the same shit over again It really is just like the link playing telephone with 20 different people that all just want you to talk to different people so you can Go back to talk to the original person you talk to to actually just get to the dungeon But once you and the chosen sage get clearance you now have to make this arduously painful journey Every single time you want to get to a dungeon It's repeated at least four times in the game and offers practically nothing new in terms of gameplay Although the trampoline ships at the very end of that one place are pretty fun Nice job And every single time the sage is gonna have this epiphany moment where the old sage just sort of communicates them to go to the dungeon And they act like you haven't seen this done three times before already Reach for the officers weapon And it gets even worse, by the time you get your way to the end of the dungeon, it rewards you with the same exact cutscene no matter what dungeon you're in. Genuinely, copy-pasted, same exact cutscene. Zero additional lore. No backstory on the specific sage you're talking to, no explanation on how they got their unique power or any form of character building.

I should never feel the desire to skip the cutscene at the very end of a major dungeon. I'd like nothing more than to smash the Demon King. That's a little gay.

Hold on. The reason this bums me out so much is that if you pull back the layers of the padding here, underneath it all is probably one of the greatest stories ever told in a Zelda game that isn't a hentai. The whole story of the game is told through these flashbacks that are scattered all around Hyrule, and these cutscenes are some of the most hype shit I have seen in the series. Seriously, the voice acting is probably one of the best things to happen to this franchise. Ganon actually feels like a scary motherfucker this time around.

On these lands long, long ago. They must have seemed to be gods. But, I've drowned Azora, I've stoned Agoron, and I'm about to drop a hard R on your entire kingdom.

This shit ain't nothing to me, man. I'll kill you, you stupid piece of shit. This game actually has plot twists, and they're good. The whole act of pulling the Master Sword in this game was done in such a clever way, it'll just completely take your breath away. And this is hands down...

No contest, the best Ganon fight in the entire series, I will die on that hill. I can't put it on the screen because of YouTube's policy against homicide, because Nintendo fucking killed it on this one. Assuming you didn't watch the Geoglyphs out of order, because for some retarded reason, you can go from watching cutscene number one, to accidentally finding cutscene number ten, spoiling the absolute piss out of everything. It happened to me, It happened to about everyone else I know who played the game and it sucks.

For a game that dumbs down the main quest to an insulting degree to make sure you don't miss any crucial story point out of order in each of the four quadrants, how do they not let-How did this one slip through the cracks? I don't know why they didn't make it where you just find each story cutscene and just unlock the next one as you go, which could have been so easily fixed by having each geoglyph just unlock the next sequence in the order of cutscenes. They are literally numbered! For a reason! You see what I'm saying here?

With like every new brilliant edition, they will just drop the ball on some of the most obvious shit. Like why do I have to deal with my sprint running out when I'm not in the middle of combat? Why don't the horses warp with the player?

Why is Nintendo taking over 30 seconds of unskippable text to tell me what a fucking headshot is? Why do I still have no ability to change the weather and just get held hostage by the rain? How did the bow item sorting make it out of beta?

How did you make the new hero abilities suck so much worse than the last game? And worse than all of this combined? How after six years can I still not pet the fucking dogs? That is inexcusable.

Put all those quality control issues aside, what about the most integral aspect to every Zelda game that's ever existed? I've been saving this can of worms until the very end because it's about time we talked about the du-I don't know if you remember, but Breath of the Wild was pretty much universally spit-roasted for having some of the most watered-down dungeons in the franchise. They were all just an amalgamation of five or six mini puzzles glued together in a random order that all shared the same coat of paint and the same copy-paste boss. But nearing the launch of Tears of the Kingdom, rumors were spreading around that they were actually redoubling efforts to bolster them in Tears of the Kingdom.

So what did they do? They listened. They actually listened.

They went back to the drawing board, they heard all the criticism, they spent about 20 minutes improving them, and we wound up with these four pieces of shit. Granted, I'm being hyperbolic, they're way better than the ones in Breath of the Wild. This time around they actually have their own textures unique to each dungeon.

But setting the bar at not dog shit is-it doesn't mean you're good. Well, yes, they are a major step up from its predecessors, and I applaud their efforts. they're still bottlenecked by their stubborn open-world design being nothing more than just a handful of independent puzzles. Here's the thing. In a game that's so open-ended and non-linear, almost to a fault, implementing a linear dungeon would have added such a refreshing addition to give some structure to your adventure.

It's called Contrast. It's the reason you don't eat Skittles right before drinking the Monster, because then all of a sudden you're going to start tasting all the ingredients with over eight syllables. But in Tears of the Kingdom, instead of having one coherent dungeon that evolves as you venture through it as you try to understand how all the rooms work together, here you're just getting a couple of fractured, one-dimensional chores that don't add any complexity outside of just flipping on a fucking light switch. Play any other dungeon from a Zelda game and there's a reason you'll have a unique, memorable experience because you're forced to understand the layout.

Take for example the Skyward Sword Sandship versus the Tears of the Kingdom Skyship. In TOTK, you just solve individual challenges in any order to get your way. But in Skyward Sword, not only are you dealing with individual challenges from room to room, but you're also having to critically take stock of its blueprints, phasing between different time periods while also having to keep track of your location relative to the different floors you're on. The sheer shape of these dungeons play a larger role in how you figure them all out. Yet when I get to the Water Temple in Tears of the Kingdom, all I see are a bunch of floating little platforms that have no relevance to each other at all.

Cause that's what they fucking are! I'm not saying they're the worst things ever. In fact, for the first time in Zelda history, I found myself actually enjoying a Fire Temple. There was fun to be had, despite their relative shortness.

The bosses were a major upgrade this time around. This bloopy dude was awesome and Kol'Garav fucking ripped. Despite these dungeons feeling better than the ones that were in Breath of the Wild, they still felt somehow worse than like the fake dungeons in Super Smash Brothers Melee.

Because they still just felt like four or five shrines tacked together. Speaking of which, shrines are back again and we can already take a big sigh of relief for it, or Breath of the Wild, I should take that out. Because they're a major upgrade from the last game.

With far more interesting puzzles that can all be tackled a million different ways. But just like in Breath of the Wild, their aesthetics never change and it kind of gets me wondering, given the game's lack of temples and dungeons, Why the fuck are there still 120 of them? Not only does this make them less special whenever you find them, because there's just so many of them across the map, but now you've taken resources away from the actual developers for making optional dungeons and temples. Some of the best moments from games like Elden Ring or Skyrim came from finding hidden temples and optional labyrinths that you could have easily passed by if you didn't keep an eye out for them.

There was so much potential here to sneak away some classic Zelda-sized dungeons to reward going that extra mile. I understand why there'd be less of them in the first game considering they had to make the whole world But there's zero fucking excuse this time around just pawn off 50 of those shrines for any dungeon That's half as cool as any of the creative ones from Twilight Princess While there are some great shrines and sky islands that do go the extra mile They're few and far between leaving the player with just a few maze Labyrinths that were basically ported over from Breath of the Wild all with the same solutions. Those don't count Fortunately, the game is still carried by its phenomenal gameplay, and it's amazing just how many fun hours you can sink into this game despite all of its shortcomings, which is no small list. Some of my best memories from this year came from me just kicking it with the Discord bros while we were all playing Tears of the Kingdom at the same time. And I'm gonna say something crazy, alright?

I think this game would have been twice as fun had they put in multiplayer. I can't believe I'm saying that as a Zelda fan, but after playing a hacked version of Ocarina of Time with the same guys... Don't jump on that thing.

I don't listen to anyone. Err. Whoops. Oh my god, it would be so fun. And it's not like they can't do it.

They managed to do it in Animal Crossing, and I'm sure there's some random fucker out there who will make a mod for it. It probably already exists! And that's not even the craziest thing I'm gonna say about this game. Because as I was putting in hour after hour into this thing, I kept noticing something wasn't quite right.

There was something missing from this game that's been in every other Zelda game, and it was kind of driving me nuts. It's the vibes. Vibes are off.

And in a Zelda game, that is a sin. And I think the biggest contributor to this, in my personal opinion, is the music. Bring it on! The music in this game is good. I like it.

It's nice. It's subtle. I love the little... All the little rinky-dink piano moments.

All the little Chinese-ass sounding villages all sound pretty. They're good. They're objectively good.

But that shit ain't Zelda. This is all music that would equally as well fit into any indie game about discovering your bisexuality or something. Because when you think Zelda, you think of adventure in bold, capitalized, impactful- It is epic to the most unironic degree. So fuck your pots, fuck your grass, grab a stick, grab your shit, because we're going out into the middle of the cul-de-sac to have an adventure.

This is a game series that's not about minimalism, it's not about rinky-dink shit, it's a game that makes grown-ass businessmen feel like fourth graders going adventuring in their neighbor's backyard. This is a game about exploring and saving new worlds, experiencing gut-wrenching sorrow and having the courage to withstand it all. And if you don't believe me, go and play any other fucking Zelda game that's ever been made.

There's a reason every YouTuber in 2016 made that the importance of music and video games Cause that shit's important! It colors the lens you use to view the game, it changes your perspective It takes any emotion you could experience in a game and turns it up to 11 When I play a video game, I wanna feel that shit, I wanna come out a changed person And I'm not even saying Tears of the Kingdom doesn't have that, it has some great moments of course But any of these other games just mug the soundtrack in this game Especially since it's reusing 90% of it And I can't even remember the remaining 10%! Making it even harder for me to enjoy the newer additions to the ToDK soundtrack, because I can only remember a handful of them. And that's the villages, the stables, and that one Rito remix that reminded me of the game that had 30 times the amount of bangers in it, and it ran on a f***ing cube! Which just reminds me of the soundtrack this game could have easily had.

Now hold on, maybe you're thinking, oh this is just Nostalgia talking because he grew up with all the Zelda games So clearly he likes that music more. Alright, well get this. Literally right after I wrapped up Tears of the Kingdom, a friend of mine started streaming Link's Awakening, a game I've never played. I haven't even seen any like footage from this thing.

He starts playing it and within 10 seconds I'm hearing a song that sounds more Zelda than anything I have heard in this game. This sounds like Zelda! So I think I'm coming at this from a pretty unbiased perspective.

The reason I'm losing my mind about this is that Nintendo is literally owner of the most successful franchise in capitalism. This is a franchise known for making better albums for just consoles changing save data than most billboard topping artists. Yet they can't afford a couple nickels that would cost them to just commission any of the thousands of amazing video game composers they have at the ready to just make a whole new soundtrack that would have blown everyone's socks off. There's no excuse for this. Even the game doesn't seem to respect its own soundtrack, because when you're going through the dungeon and the music's scaling with each area you unlock, if you even make eye contact with any of the oppozoids around you, the music just completely drops out to be replaced with some generic let's tussle music, completely stepping on the vibe of this whole area.

Oh, cool. Yeah, let's get sick of the good music anyway. The last time they ever did this was in Twilight Princess where they just fucked up one of the best and most emotional scenes in the entire series for the same reason. Like literally an unskippable ad would have been better here. Tired of the interrupting enemy music for just five dollars?

I cannot believe they would make that same mistake twice. It just makes me feel like they don't care about the game that much. I know you may be just thinking, oh, he's just hating on the entire soundtrack. Not at all. There's some brilliant themes in this game.

Colgaris alone is enough to justify all the other lackluster boss themes. The music they used for the trailers and the dungeons were all A plus tier. But that accounts for about 1% of all the time you're playing this game and listening to the soundtrack.

Maybe I am blowing things out of proportion here. Because no matter how much I bitch and moan about this game, there is still an incredible experience for just about anyone who wants to pick it up. There's no Zelda game that's launched without controversy. But at the same time, I've never played a Zelda game that I haven't enjoyed.

With all that said, if this video tickled your asshole, I've got three others just like it that are arguably even better than this one. If you want to be a producer in the video yourself and get your name up on the wall, I've got a Patreon for that too. And bonus, I'm actually coming out with a whole new series where I'm uploading exclusive content to Patreon and YouTube members.

That's going to be coming out really shortly. I'm really... Excited to launch that it's been a blast guys.

Sorry for taking so long I've got another video already in the works. That's gonna be coming out on the

Transcript for:Overview of Zelda Franchise and TotK

Transcript for:
Overview of Zelda Franchise and TotK