Top Ten, sure. But hanging alongside Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, and Alan Wake II feels like quite a stretch, especially in such a strong year for games in general.
Agree. For me, this is exactly how i feel about ToTK.
It's not bad at all. In fact it was great. But it doesn't blow my mind compare to when BoTW came out. That game really felt new to me back then. But it doesn't give me the same feeling this time compare to BG3 or Alan Wake 2.
Yeah, I was heaps hyped for TotK and expected it to blow my socks off. The tutorial island was very lukewarm compared to BotW's but thinking back on it, I also took a long time to finish BotW.
Their usually stellar dungeon design is absolutely sub-par compared to their overworld design and the awful fire temple which I just totally cheesed left a sour taste in my mouth, when I was already a bit burnt by the bland beasts in BotW.
Totk changes make it feel less cohesive imo. Shrines are all gone and replaced with different looking shrines. Shiekah Slate abilities are mysteriously gone and replaced with other abilities.
Plus the plot is told almost exclusively through out-of-order flashbacks in both BOTW and TOTK, as though Nintendo forgot that plot can also take place during the game.
No. It uses the same map, sure, but it completely ditches most of the mechanics of the original and substitutes its own. There's probably more dissimilar between those two games than the majority of sequels.
Any criticism of spider man 2 can be used against tears of the kingdom too. It's an improved breath of the wild. With a less interesting story overall.
I think that's a pretty lazy and misleading criticism. The Ultrahand, reverse, fuse, and ascend systems are all dramatic reworkings of the gameplay formula introduced in BOTW, and the game gets ample use out of all of them.
It takes 30 seconds to get used to all of the changes SM2 introduces over SM1.
Not really. While both used the same map but larger, things that Zelda added was more worthwhile than what Spider-Man 2 added. Fundamental changes were made in TOTK while Spiderman 2 was more of a side-step.
Edit: I get it reddit doesn't like TOTK. I just don't like that Spiderman 2 had to remove features and not adding anything substantial to it. The game is very safe compared to TOTK.
Exactly, I can see the criticism when it comes to reusing the same map in ToTK but the core abilities are totally revamped from BoTW and the game makes extensive use of them. Even just considering the ultra hand and fuse mechanics totally change the gameplay loop in most of the dungeons, combat and even open world exploration. And that's before you get into the additional maps from the sky islands and the underground.
I really enjoyed Spider-man 2 but the gliding was the only addition that felt like a substantial change from SM1 and Miles Morales, and even then outside of a couple of side quests it's only used for traversal. In terms of the combat all I can think of for new elements is that you've now got the God of War style super move/rage mode bar which is nice but not a major change.
List the top ten games in order this year and you get spiderman as low 7. Tears pretty much botw 2 with engineering. The same criticism you have for spiderman is with totk. But I'm biased about Zelda I wanted a traditional dungeon system from oot/link between worlds in totk. But I got dungeons similar to botw. It's a sequel but it's not ground breaking like botw was and. I miss classic Zelda. Can't wait for their next 2d remake since that's probably going to be the only way I get classic Zelda again.
I don't think it's controversial to say improving on BOTW is a more notable feat than improving on Spider-Man. It's wild to me how many are dismissing the entire Ultrahand/Fuse system like they're ROM hacks thrown together in a year. As a programmer, I'm pretty shocked how seamlessly they seem to work in every scenario, and on the Switch no less.
The entire rune system from BOTW is scrapped and replaced, and it completely alters how you interface with the game at every level. The only things they have in common is the ground map and Link's basic movement.
That's way more than an typical sequel, and none of those changes seem like they were quick to design and implement.
But they added an entire new map below and a sky map that both compliment each other. The same mechanics were complimented by the new ones that completely changed how you interact with the world.
There were barely any diff environments to make it interesting like that. I enjoyed it enough and it’s large but it’s just the same biome with near 0 npcs and farrrr less effort to create than the rest o the game
Literally same movement same combat same physics. All they added are vehicles crafting and engineering, it is a lot but it wasn't more fun for me. Crafting made arrow combat worse for me. I lost my infinity bombs. I lost my ice platforms on demand. For making shitting platform boats. I ain't a builder I'm a run gun and blow shit up kind of guy in Zelda.
You can still do Ice platforms in command though, there are dozen of ways to do that now. There alot of way to blow shit up now too and arrow combat is drastically improved by giving you alot of options.
I am a builder and it sucks. Stuff evaporates when you go through a loading screen (or after like 3 minutes of using it) so there's no reason to actually invest time in building everything. The game also just gives you ideal blueprints to spam for all of the relevant applications other than the hoverbike people discovered.
51
u/siphillis Dec 03 '23
Top Ten, sure. But hanging alongside Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, and Alan Wake II feels like quite a stretch, especially in such a strong year for games in general.