I played BotW when it came out and I had a great time, a long great time. I explored almost everything, but didn't really care about Koroks.
With the release of TotK coming closer I never felt hyped, but I thought that I would have a great time and play over a 100 hours again.
Two week before release I played it and the beginning was okay. The tutorial area was okay. The new fusing and ~~masterhand~~ ultrahand lul abilities were tedious.
As I got to the overworld I quickly realised that I won't be playing this game for long. It's the same Hyrule, I knew that, but the overworld has changed. There are new things that make it exciting to explore. Isn't that great? Not for me. Walking around feels the same as it did after I already explored Hyrule in BotW. So pretty boring. Because I want to know what has changed, I have the urge explore everything, while running around still feels boring. Then at a place that had some relevence or cool thing in BotW it either hasn't changed much and I am dissapoited, or it has changed and I get the urge to play BotW to compare the area. Either way, this is a bad experience and not fun. At this point I decided I would stop playing and I was no longer open-minded towards the game.
A few days later, still before release, so I couldn't watch videos of it, I wanted to see the four main cities. I more or less rushed to them. Gerudo are still idiots, prince Sidon is not marrying Link wtf, Rito and Gorons were uninteresting to me. Okay then. I played maybe 10 hours total, which isn't a little, but this game would demand ten times that. I stopped again and this time for good.
When the game released I watched the cinematics, which were okay for a Zelda game.
I could write more, but I'll just link a Nerrel video, with which I agree with.
What do you all think? What were your experiences?
I have to disagree that its the same hyrule. They've added just so mush more stuff!!
Botw hyrule was already pretty big. Totk hyrule is what - 2.5 times bigger?
I loved exploring in botw, so this version is more enjoyable for me.
I do miss the Hero Cycle though.
Glad you like the game. I also missed the bike when I played.
To be fair I wasn't really in the depths. I felt like I would be underpowered, which now that I think about, isn't how the game works. Caves and the sky weren't that interesting to me. Those areas aside, it's still not enterirely the same world, but my point is it's too much. I would need put too much effort into exploring a world that feels the same anyway. It would be different if it were a new world. I would naturally stumble across things that are interesting, but I already know where the interesting stuff could be on this map, so I want to check all those places out as fast as possible.
That I agree with. Its going to take me years to finish this game.
I think that the design philosophy on the switch is to allow games to have short gaming sessions - so you can accomplish something in 10-15 minutes. And the drawback of this is there are so many small things to do that it is constantly distracting.