Tears of the Kingdom is a Frustrating 10/10

so... zelda, am i right?

I really love the discussion surrounding how much freedom is given. On one hand, it's awesome that the game lets you get away with this stuff, but on the other it can mess with the experience because potentially clever puzzles, dungeons, and fights can be skipped with a well built helicopter or rocket. Still, totk is one of the best games ever because it unlocked the war criminal inside all of us. That has to be worth something.

I love the name of part 2 "The weight of infinite freedom" sounds like the title to some psychology book diving into what it means to be human, but no its about a zelda game. Amazing

I played this game for well over 300 hours. I finished every side quest, conquered every shrine, did about everything I could in the game (besides the god forsaken koroks) Towards the end, I started almost resenting what I was doing, but I couldn't bring myself to confront Ganondorf. I kept searching for other things to do because I knew that if I fought him, it would all be over. I didn't want this beautiful masterpiece of a game to end for me, but I almost ruined it for myself in the process. This video helped remind me why I love this series so much in the first place. Thank you.

I really resonate with that statement towards the end of "ripping myself away because I didn't want things to end" massively. I was procrastinating on going to fight Ganondorf for so long because I was having way too much fun and I didn't want to leave this world. I eventually accepted fate and went to face Ganondorf and was blown away again by Nintendo's ingenuity in the fight. And after it was all over, I felt a mix of both joy and sadness. Joy filled from being able to play this amazing game from start to finish but also sad that it had come to an end. But no matter what, I'll always look upon this game nostalgically.

No one can capture the spirit of presentation and writing quite like Yakko. Love your vids man, you are a personal inspiration to me.

As someone who beat tears of the kingdom, and has never played breath of the wild. This game blew my mind 💀

WOW you hit the nail on the head with this video. It's so easy to break the game (with rocket shields, airbikes and recall elevators) that I found myself self limiting a ton. Personally I loved seeing how the puzzles evolved throughout the regional shrines to their respective dungeons; and even the sky islands had a lot of cool puzzles I didn't wanna miss out on With that being said, I also did love the BotW divine beasts a ton and still do!! Being able to control the dungeon on a macro level for puzzle solving and traversal was awesome, and very few Zelda dungeons hold this design style (Majora's mask and skyward sword do it a bit too, but other than that it's like one dungeon per game)

I had the EXACT same experience with 5th hidden temple. found it by just being desperate to get there and when It was revealed in the story 100 HOURS LATER I was had already completed it.

For you segment at the end, I wanna say that's why I like your content so much. Everyone forgets that art is a very emotional and bias thing, and there is no such thing as "Objectively perfect." Some of the best games that people say are "Objectively" the best are games that I can't stand (like Hollow Knight). But you, you aren't afraid to dive into that. You give good objective and technical points, but you aren't afraid to talk about how a game makes you feel and your personal experience with it, which is just as or possibly even more important. Love is to enjoy something despite it's flaws. My favorite game of all time is Persona 5 (either version). Is it a perfect game? No. But the experience as a whole let me feeling something that I never felt before from another game. Every journey has some ugly bumps, but the journey as a whole was an incredible one. You always make it a point to talk about your personal journey with a game, and It's a great reminder about what's important most.

I finally, after two failed attempts due to getting distracted, finished BotW and went right into this game. As soon as the game made it extremely clear that you could staple ANYTHING to your weapons, I was just laughing so hard at the silly combinations you could make, even if they are something as dangerous as the Boomerang Bomb. Most of my vehicles end up failing like that boat, but that's part of the fun sometimes.

You're right, i imagine being able to eat mid battle WOULD remove all steaks from battle

I'm just starting the video, but, I have to say, you're quickly becoming my favorite game reviewer with the sheer depth of your videos.

I feel like I would have enjoyed both BoTW and ToTK more if only one of them existed. Tears improve so much on what BoTW did that the latter does feel invalidated aside from very minor details. On the other hand, sharing so much with BoTW meant that ToTK lacked a unique identity. I was definitely burnt out from exploring the same world across 2 games.

I was someone who didn't like BotW but playing TotK felt like playing the BotW that got the critcal and commercial acclaim. I'm personally so happy with the direction it took and that I could finally understand that same joy.

Hey! I’ve been watching and really enjoying your videos for a while now, but this one in particular felt really special. I think you captured something really special in the final chapter of this video which is really difficult to put into words, and that’s something I honestly appreciate 🙂

Great video. I would add, regarding the weight of infinite freedom, that it's also a huge issue on the narration level. Like, how many people have found out what happened to zelda before finishing all dungeons, and then watch link going around still asking the leaders if they know what happened to her? Or how "you can do any of the regions first! But we REALLY REALLY would like you to go see the birds first! We've locked half the important mechanics like inventory expansion and armor upgrades on the way there!". I feel like the devs were forced to follow the botw formula even when it didn't fit. Blood moon is another example of that. It really didn't need to be there again, and it really ruins the feel of the new side quests with npcs clearing out monster camps, like "wow nice job we cleared the camp until they spawn again tonight." And don't get me started on armor upgrades. But as you said, frustration comes most of all from flaws in greatness.

Dude the funniest part was where you talked about thunderhead isles and exploring it without clearing the storm. I actually did the same thing as you, except I LUCKED myself into the door instantly. within 30 seconds of landing I was just at the shrine on the dragons head, and just found Mineru lol.

for me i liked both games, but my biggest disapointment is that they didnt fix any of the problems i had with the menu system in totk, in fact they made it worse with the ability to fuse arrows

One thing you didn't mention that I think is super important: the game launched fully functional. There were minor hiccups, but it's a breath of fresh air to see a game even more ambitious than the first and with systems this complex launch in a better state than 80% of modern releases