I just played it for an hour. It's like a remix Breath of the Wild, which isn't a bad thing considering BotW might be the best game I've ever played. But because of that there's no initial mind blowing experience of learning the mechanics for the first time, understanding how you can go anywhere, climb anything, etc. Hard to replicate an experience like that I suppose. But it still seems like a ton of fun, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it plenty.
My first mind-blowing moment in BotW was peeking down from from the top of a hill and seeing a deep valley with a river to the east and a ridge with a forest to the west. They blended gorgeously into a single landscape but I understood that each option would be a different adventure. It was like choosing the north or east exit in classical Zelda, except this was totally organic, not instantiated, operating over perfectly continuous space. I was ~30 at the time and had been playing open world games since the early 2000s. It blew my mind regardless.
Having played so many games, and having even worked at Nintendo for a good time, I’ve lost my sense of wonder somewhat and I only expect to have a few more moments like that in the rest of my life. Nintendo is nevertheless possibly one of the few companies still capable of pulling it off.
For sure. When you first play BotW it's somehow like, oh yeah, I get it now, this is what Zelda was supposed to be all along. More than that even, it's like the platonic ideal of a video game.
YouTube critic Nerrel argues quite the opposite, that SS emphasizes a completely different set of the Zelda core values— it's about story/characters, elaborate dungeons and bosses each bursting with unique personality, and classical, linear item-unlock progression paths. Whereas BOTW isn't any of those things and prioritizes freedom, exploration, and emergent gameplay.
It would be totally fine from like a plot standpoint, but personally I would play BotW first. Or at the very least get like 50% of the way through. I think that game does a better job of introducing the open world Zelda concept and it's a really fun experience the first time.
This game obviously has the same open world but it's not introduced in quite such a spectacular way (probably because they know most people have already played it).
I started playing a week ago, though I’m not super far in.
You could, but I’d definitely suggest playing Breath of the Wild first if possible. TotK is a sequel, so characters already know you, part of the fun is seeing how the map changed, etc.
Also, they’ve added quite a few conveniences that would make it hard to play in the reverse order.
If you didn't play BotW, then by all means, play one of the best-reviewed games of all time, which is probably a little bit cheaper by now. It's not like you'd be going back to 8-bit era and the technological whiplash would ruin the experience - they're basically the same in terms of quality, scope, and tech experience.
It probably would be fine but you should consider just playing BOTW. I don’t think this game will be a huge technical leap ahead given it’s a switch title anyway. BOTW holds up very well imo so you would be doing yourself a disservice to skip it.
