Gold Scum

(Spoilers!) I really wanted to like this game, but for me it's proven extremely difficult. I loved BOTW, and was a total nerd. Therefore, I could not have been more excited for Tears of The Kingdom. Unfortunately it did not live up to my expectations. When I first loaded up the game, it already felt stale, with the starting area just being a sky island version of the great plateau. Don't get me wrong, the sky islands are cool, but I wish there was more. Considering you are on the same map and in the same territory, you would expect Nintendo to put more effort into making new locations. But no. There are very little sky islands to explore, and the ones that do exist are never incredibly rewarding. The Depths are incredibly large, being the same size as the map, but are bery tedious, time consuming, and resource consuming, with, again, little to know rewards. One of the most frustrating things is the locations. I was super excited to check out how the villages had changed, and what new adaptations were there, how had they rebuilt, etc. I am fairly far in the game, with only the Air temple left, meaning I haven't seen Rito village yet, but so far every location i have gone to has disapointed me. Most notably, Gerudo town and Zora's domain, which are both completely unchanged. The only noticeable difference in Gerudo town is that you can order a drink from the canteen now. Then you look at hateno village and Kakariko village. Hateno village has mushroom sculptures everywhere, and Kakariko village has a couple ruins sitting in its mountains. These changes, as you can imagine, are completely underwhelming. Aside from the map being stale and just plain boring, the gameplay and combat also deserves a section. Because of the aging tech that both TOTK and BOTW use, it limits the game by a lot, making not a whole lot possible. Such as the shrines, where you walk in to enter. It could be super cool if you could walk in and out (thats what I expected when i first went into a shrine), but instead it puts you directly into a loading screen. Not only that, but the combat remains unchanged, and the weapon system is bogus. The game relies on its weapon system so much to a point where at times it cant function. I get that it forces you to progress by killing more difficult enemies to get better items to attach to your weapons, but it also makes it unpleasant, and over complicated. The combat being unchanged also just makes the entire game feel like a glorified DLC. Overall it's not my favorite game of all time. I think it's really hard to try and beat something as revolutionary and amazing as BOTW. Nintendo tried their best within the time they had, and made some cool advances, but for the most part, were not able to recreate the amazing experience that BOTW was. I think I will stick around to beat it, but I will most likely never come back to really do any post game content after wards.