You know the Wii U version of BotW has been out of print for years and the Wii U eShop was closed last year, so it was literally impossible to buy it during the last quarter, right?
I kind of understand it- TOTK is a sequel, costs $10 more, and is pretty similar to BOTW. I’m sure a lot of people are satisfied with just the original
Lmao, in Poland right now ToTK is 2 usd cheaper than BoTW and both are on promotion - BoTW for the first time ever (at this price, it was like 5% cheaper sometimes, never 20%) and ToTK got cheaper than within few months of premiere. I really think beyond the first few month hype it doesn't sell well in general as a game.
I found TOTK more fun to play mechanically. I return for the sandbox play. I found BOTW more meaningful and hence more impactful. I return for the story and atmosphere. Nintendo did a marvellous job on both, but the biggest "mistake" was downplaying the lore of BOTW in TOTK to make it more "accessible" for new players. This diminished the meaning quite significantly for me. What used to be mystique and intrigue turned into plain video game geometry.
@@TiredOx7536 What they probably meant with the last part is that TotK's world just feels like nothing more than "a video game world". Or worded differently, it's significantly more difficult to actually immerse yourself in TotK's world than Botw's world, and Hyrule no longer feels alive like it used to
Yeah, the immersion in TOTK was just fully broken to me. The world couldn't decide if it was feeling happy or gloomy, the characters couldn't decide if they recognize Link or not and while the world having much more stuff in it is nice on paper, it doesn't feel like you are a sole hero exploring a mostly empty and lonely world that has been suffering for decades anymore And my other big critique is that that I hate how weapons work in TOTK. In BOTW it was always cool to find a new weapon and to just start using it. But in the sequel, all you ever find is rusting crap or materials you can use to fuse stuff with yourself. Sure I acnowledge the amout of flexibility and self choice that this gives, but the entire excitement of just finding cool weapons lying around or dropping from enemies is entirely gone. Basically they switched it out for options, but too many options just gets overwhelming at some point
@@tom-ateI mean there's an argument to be made that you're not quite exploring a lonely and dead world anymore since you kinda showed up in botw and gave people some time to rebuild and stuff
@@gododoofI always look at it as £60 + $10 DLC ToTK can easily be $60 + $25 DLC The content is huuuuge compared to BotW, overwhelmingly more compared to BOTW + Champion's Ballad DLC
I think this is because BOTW is a more accessible game for people new to the zelda series. Being the first game in a two-part series means that new players are more likely to gravitate to the first game. TOTK was most appealing to players who had already played BOTW and were looking for more of that style of play. Since most of these players have already bought TOTK it is unlikely that TOTK will surpass BOTW in lifetime sales.
A sequel rarely sells as much or more than the prequel for that reason, people don't usually want to jump into the second part without playing the first. On top of that, anyone who bought BotW and ultimately didn't like the new style as much isn't likely to buy TotK at all, so it was never going to sell as much.
Yeah but the " *still* selling faster " is kinda crazy considering it's been out for 7 years and one would assume most people with a Switch already bought it
@@alibabaschultz352It emphatically is not, and I'd be interested to know how the hell you came to that conclusion. BotW feels blatantly empty and unfinished in comparison, now. That said, it's- surprisingly- a significantly different game.
@@timothyn4699 Months later, and I'm still curious about this. Cause I will ALWAYS recommend to play TOTK before BOTW just for the sake of progression of cohesive/structured design. Don't want to jump the shark early imo.
@@Hadeks_Marow it's a good question, I feel like totk is a fair more mechanically advanced, but botw has a better sense of awe and mood/atmosphere to it. I prefer botw I think for that, if I could only have played one, that made more an impact. However, part of the power of botw is in the mystery and the unknown. If you don't have that as much, I wonder if it would be as enjoyable. It's also special in being the first of it's kind, and exploring the vast world, where totk being second makes it less enjoyable that said, if you truly went in blind with totk first, maybe it'd still have a powerful effect, but instead of mystery, it'd be more a sense of loss
@@Hadeks_Marow come to think of it, by me being a long time Zelda fan, and having played like Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, those soundtracks are solid with strong driving melodies. The difference/contrast in those games versus botw really helped add to the atmosphere and feeling of loss or that something was off and missing. If I had only played botw...I probably would've still gotten a good sense of mood/loss, but not as strongly bc of my history w the series I didn't end up finished totk the more restrictive combat of botw might help lend to the feeling, but I'd wonder if it would become boring after playing totk, comparatively do you have a preference between the two?
@@benjthewhite the plot, the aesthetics, the music, everything i enjoyed about zelda totally gone. all the items are reduced to planned obsolescence, and all the lore that meant so much to the franchise previously reduced to like, item pickups you churn through. No real level design. Vibes gone. I think it represents a real artistic step backwards for nintendo.
Quantity ("adding more") does not equal quality ("a better game"). This isn't an argument about which game is better. This is an objective statement to point out how, if you're gonna give reasoning, it shouldn't be relying on false equivalencies. More doesn't mean better. Better game design means better. If we are gonna argue which is better _(which, we are not about to do that here, please),_ then that's the lens we need to look at it through. Not through the lens of "which has 'more' content". A walking sim where you just hold W for hours as you experience new environment after new environment isn't a good game just because of how much content they put into the walking. And likewise, adding more environments to walk through doesn't make the game any better, especially if you don't like those new environments or they changed something else that you did like (like the walking physics). There is such a thing as negative quality additions. These are known as "detractions". So not only does "more" not always equal "better", it can just as easily equal "worse". Again, I don't have a favorite. I'm just tired of this bad argument relying on bad logic. To be critical is to critique something for it's faults. There is nothing critical when using the braindead expression of "it has more, so checkmate, it's the better game". There's a lot more nuance to the topic and, if people took it more seriously (on both sides) to take that aspect into consideration, maybe the topic wouldn't be as annoying every time where we "wouldn't" have to keep hearing people repeat the same non-critical bullet points (which happens with both sides of the argument, but "it has more" just happens to be the worst offender of uncriticalness).
right! even though it has more content, when i watched someone else play totk i didn't really like the gameplay, a lot of elements just seemed janky and unsatisfying. botw seemed a lot more cohesive and just better so im playing that one instead
I've used this metaphor repeatedly in this regard, but the thing about TOTK is that it's essentially Mario Galaxy 2. Not just in terms of development - both being additional content that got so big that they became separate games - but also in terms of cultural impact. People don't remember Galaxy 2 much. Not that they don't like it - they don't *remember* it. Galaxy 1 practically defined the Wii, just like how BOTW defined the Switch. They aren't necessarily "better" than their sequels - but they were new. They set the foundation that Galaxy 2/TOTK would build upon. That kind of impact is the psychological equivalent of lightning-in-a-bottle. Consider Toby Fox, for instance. Sure, he and co. are making Deltarune, and it does a lot of things even better (or at least just as good) as Undertale... but most people out-of-the-loop will probably still think "oh, Toby Fox, that's the Undertale guy, right?". ----- As for the comparison between BOTW and TOTK directly, I think the biggest issue is that BOTW spent almost seven years being the only Zelda game of its kind. When you spend that long between releases, as the pioneer of that new gameplay style, of course people are going to take the game and push it to the limit. That's also why people view BOTW with such rosy glasses - there's a lot of things that game does wrong (and a lot of criticisms thrown at TOTK are *more* applicable to BOTW!), but it's easy to overlook those things when you have nothing else to compare it to. There's a lot of people who talk about how TOTK "fell off" for them - they played it, they loved it, and they haven't gone back to it since. But the thing is... that's how most people felt about BOTW, too. I still distinctly remember people feeling that way, way back when. I played BOTW in 2017, loved it just as much as everyone else, and then did not play the game for the next five years. I did make an attempt at a replay, once, but I ran out of steam before even reaching Kakariko. And it makes sense. They're huge, enormous games, and they really aren't replayable in the same way that older Zelda games are. That's not a bad thing, but it's another major difference between the two styles. The fact that TOTK is "The Sequel to BOTW" doesn't help matters; if it's a sequel, you should play the first game first, right? I love TOTK. I think it's a significant improvement on BOTW in many, many ways. But it was never, ever going to make the same splash that BOTW did. Nothing could.
galaxy 2 was just not the same gameplay improved people didn't remember because it was a bad game, maybe a lot of people drop the game very soon even, that's why they don't remember totk i dropped after 20 hours, soon after i visited the below that was empty as hell, the sky islands had enough content and the first ones were interesting, the other ones no I heard that they made more islands but miyamoto said it was too much or something, the below they just copy paste inverse the hyrule map and didn't have enough time/budget wtf also i would have liked some meteor or something else changed the hyrule map also 100 hours on botw, 20 hours on totk
@@Alex254561"I heard that they made more islands but Miyamoto said it was too much or something" God, you people don't know what to invent anymore to make Miyamoto look bad
To be honest, almost no Zelda game is replayable to me. I like them as adventures. After beating one, I feel wrong in going back. Breath of the Wild is good in the sense that it's so big and exciting that I leave it and always come back to my old file and find new things. I would never restart it though. It's my journey
Arlo: “Let’s just talk sales today, don’t talk in the comments how you didn’t like Tears of the Kingdom” People in the comments, immediately: “I didn’t like Tears of the Kingdom!!”
We will not be silenced! But yeah, a lot of people didn't like TotK and now that the honeymoon period is over, we can share why without immediate backlash.
To be fair to them, he then immediately went on an impassioned mini-rant about how TotK is "just BotW but with more." That's not exactly closing a discussion.
@@mythosinfinite6736I was just about to comment this. Like he says “don’t talk about why you prefer BotW” and then immediately brings up and elucidates the other side of the argument and it’s like okay, well if you do that you’re just inviting people to defend BotW. Weird to basically say “I’m gonna make a case for one point of view but please don’t disagree with me because I don’t want to hear about it.”
I guess not as many casual players eyes were on this game. Me i had my fun with the game, but when i dropped off it i really dropped off it I have not picked it up again since it came out no special reason i just haven’t felt compelled to play it again.
Yeah but when you get into it again it's like a brand new game. You can do all kinds of different things in it. Yeah burnout happens time to time, but if you space it out over long periods, it stays fun. For me, a good 100-200 hours is about how long i play it before stopping for a bit. I love it. I love both games so much.
That's what I think. The only people I know who like the game are the people who are obsessed with it. Nobody who just plays it casually. Didn't matter if they did or didn't like/play BOTW either. They also all dropped the game very early on too.
I'd say it's the opposite. Totk seems to appeal exclusively to casual players, with its surface level story, basic puzzles, braindead traversal, and an emphasis on content creator-friendly mechanics.
Earlier this year I was at GameStop and these two girls came in, early teens, and they were all excited to get a game. Breath of the Wild. It was fun to see.
I loved Breath of Wild, but I couldn't finish Tears of the Kingdom for some reason. As time goes on I feel that Breath of the Wild will be seen as the better game.
It feels like Ocarina vs Majora again. With BOTW feeling like Ocarina to TOTK's Majora. People that like TOTK more REALLY LIKE it more, but BOTW will always be the more broadly accessible/enjoyed game of the pair. Its THE game to own on Switch just like Ocarina was THE game for N64. Theres nothing TOTK can do to top it, its just never going to have the same legendary status as the game that shook up the 3d zelda formula, its going to be that "weird sequel where they recycled stuff" like Majora was.
I ended up selling my copy of TotK. I had so much stuff left to do, but none of it seemed interesting or meaningful. If I ever want to go back to open world Hyrule, I'll just play BotW again.
@@thefilmdirector1 eh majora was cool because of the sense of dread in the atmosphere that the world and npc’s presented. It felt a lot closer to that in BoTW with so many npc’s talking about the previous calamity and the diminished but still prevalent danger, idk what the atmosphere in ToTK was going for. Felt like more npc’s were concerned with looking like Mario toads rather than all the weird stuff that just appeared and is still falling out of the sky lol
I have 3x the playtime of BOTW that I do of TOTK...which is weird because TOTK has more content. BOTW just coalesces together better. I was hoping TOTK would be incredible, but it oddly struggled to hold my attention after 2 dungeons. It was essentially just "BOTW again" with not enough innovation. The best part was the tutorial on the Great Sky Island, but that's not worth 70 dollars. I think TOTK really needed to be a new map/world.
I think people were hoping for a better crafted story, the thing BotW was obviously lacking, and instead they got BotW again but with the ability to glue a rock to a stick.
The story wasn't bad exactly. I think it just failed it's delivery. Like the exact same cutscene 4 times kills the vibe and the fragmented nature of the main story where you can view it out of order also kills the vibe. All you need is the one memory with the main twist plot point and all the rest start feeling immediately feel like filler Instead of a story building itself up.
@@raysay1818 idk man seeing these champions act so dumb to the painfully obvious doppelganger running around and link who would see this from his perspective just to not say anything about it is really dumb too. These people just don't act like real people often in totk and that's very immersion breaking
@@AlphaladZXA that's is also very true I forgot to mention the inconsistency with the Zelda decoy. My point was more of that the story had all the elements to be a better told story they just kind of goofed the presentation of it in several ways. The over arching of plot structures are lovely it just doesn't flow correctly. So like is it better? Hard to say exactly
Secret stones? The story was disappointing, especially when you consider the fact of how *easy* it would have been to connect "secret stones" to spiritual stones from OoT. That would have been awesome. And spiritual stones sound cooler than secret stones anyway. For the life of me, I can't figure out why they avoided that moment. Honestly, I think ToTK's story is underrated. But I got hopping mad at the inconsistencies of the sequel. Like Link acting like he'd never seen a Sheikah Slate before ^.^ and that was AFTER the beginning of the game where he's escorting Zelda who was using a Sheikah Slate to document their time underneath Hyrule Castle. I also think people were hoping for more to do in the world. Or something new to interact with as you went through the game. Sign guy, Koroks, caves, enemies, and shrines are all I can think of off the top of my head. Then, they essentially doubled the size of the map of BoTW, and thought that adding a light mechanic /a few ancient robot npcs / gloom enemies would be enough. The more of ToTK you complete, the more you realize that you're actually just doing the same thing over and over and over again for next to no reward.
I don't think I'll ever finish TOTK, and I've tried at least five or six times to push through it, but I keep getting so bored, and I can't quite work out why. For some reason, BOTW just feels like a tighter, better game to me and I've played through it a bunch of times without ever getting burnt out. The divine beasts are way more fun, and I really enjoy scaling the sky towers and using them to figure out where I want to go next. In TOTK, I get so easily overwhelmed by the sky islands, Hyrule, and then the depths. I just kept running out of mental energy for it all. If I wasn't propping up signs every 5 minutes, I was jumping down wells, or trying to light up all the lightroots in the depths. Maybe my need to complete everything was ruining the fun for me, because there's just so much mindless busywork. BOTW is much, much simpler and I think my scatty little brain needs that to have fun, or I just end up drowning. I'm just now realising that this may be why I've never finished a Ubisoft game either, haha.
Got burnt out too on totk..I got through, but had to take a break for 9 months. It got too exhaustive. I think the reused overworld did it tbh. Botw is better.
Not to be that guy, but this title is incorrect. It is not selling "faster" than TotK. I know the video itself is correct (selling more in the last quarter), but Tears of the Kingdom has only been out for a year and a few months, and it has sold over 20 million copies. Breath of the Wild took 3 years to sell 20 million copies, and that was with counting the Wii U version (it was at 18m on Switch alone). So TotK is in fact selling way faster, even if the numbers slowed down already. It took BotW 6 years to get to 30m, and TotK is only 10m behind it after just 1 year. It won't surpass it, I don't think, but I just had to get that out there. Splatoon 3 had a similar situation, it sold way more way faster but then slowed down significantly, but it has such a small gap between it and 2 now.
There's no dispute that TotK won for raw speed (that 20 mil didn't even take the whole year, it was a few months), but for some reason it lacks any of the continuing momentum that carried BotW to such heights. It pretty much hopped straight to 20M and then just... stopped. Meanwhile BotW is still pushing units, even more than TotK some months seemingly. The sales seem to imply that purchasers of TotK are almost exclusively returning BotW fans; 2/3 retention isn't horrible but it's certainly lower than I would've guessed. I keep wondering what made the two have such drastically different curves. The price increase? Lack of DLC? Mixed fan response? Just that many people who bought BotW didn't like it?
@@aetherial87 I was curious so looked up the sales of BotW and the Switch itself in their (shared) first year. 17.8m console sales and 8.5m BotW sales. BotW had been sold to 48% of the Switch install base at that time.
@@thefilmdirector1 yes, there's just something about botw that totk completely lacks. And I personally enjoy the old shrines better, think that characters like mipha and revali are more interesting than rauru and sonya, and I like the divine beasts better than the "temples". Plus I think the world looks better when it's not cluttered with random garbage and copy pasted sky islands with silver bokoblins every 5 feet
When James Cameron made Avatar 2, he said the most important thing to get right was recreating how Avatar 1 made people feel instead of just trying to go bigger with the action. I think TOTK doesn't connect with as many people because Nintendo tried to go bigger with the gameplay but neglected the Zen/back to nature atmosphere that people fell in love with in the first one.
Sequelitis aside, one possible contributing factor to the "lacking" sales of ToTK is the pandemic. Post pandemic when everyone has to go back to work, games will simply sell less as people have less time to play games. BotW had the benefit of releasing with huge acclaim and winning a GotY, and when the pandemic hit and everyone had to stay home, I'm sure that of a lot of people who bought a Switch during that time period had BotW on their list of games to play.
Ultimately I think what doomed this game is something called "Earned Media". Which is essentially just marketing talk for "word of mouth" where people naturally talk positively about your product. Botw, people wouldn't stop doing letsplays of it, talking about it with their friends, singing praises of the game. When totk came out, all I heard was "I couldn't be bothered to finish it" or "I got bored after awhile". Word of mouth sells games. And, regardless of how anyone "actually" feels about the games, this one just had worse word of mouth comparatively, which (if we are just talking raw sales numbers) didn't push the "fence sitters" who weren't sure to buy it or not to--well, the word of mouth just wasn't there to convince them to do so like there was for botw. People stopped posting youtube letsplays on it alot quicker, put the game down sooner. Outside of "wacky creation clips", it's 5 minutes of fame became more like 1 minute. That's what hurt it's sales if you ask me. And when it was confirmed no DLC. . . that's what killed it.
I dunno...a lot of people loved TOTK too and many would say it's better then BOTW really. True...but still generally most do call it better then BOTW I noticed.
Yeah that's right, I have a friend who asked me if I recommend TotK (we both liked BotW a lot) and of course told him no for all the reasons many videos are explaining now, I'm glad he didn't waste $70 like me
@@ericwindsor339I mean, the sequel is so weirdly detached and disconnected from the first game that your take makes perfect sense. It feels more like an alternate universe story than a sequel.
@@austinwilkerson84 yeah I think TOTK is more like a higher budget remake than a sequel, which isn't really what people were asking for. If you played the first game 7 years ago then it might feel fresh playing TOTK now, but if you were a big BOTW fan and played it a lot a lot of things wear out their shine very quickly. Its just the same stuff over and over again
I actually have a lot of friends that bought TOTK because they were seeing all sorts of weird contraptions on the internet and wanted to get the game to see what was up with all of that. Some of them even bought a switch just for Tears of the Kingdom. No the game's been out for so long, even though it's like the only game they own, they've had some time apart from it and they want that experience again, so now they're getting breath of the wild to kind of backfill and get more of the Zelda experience. They came for Ultrahand, they stayed for Zelda. It's kind of awesome.
@@esiahlynch That's why I told them to start with breath of the wild, but they didn't listen. Some of them still liked it, most of them said they felt really constrained by the lack of full telekinesis and get out of jail free card with ascend
I have about 350 hours in BotW. I put in about 60 hours into TotK at launch but I haven't touched it for a while. Eventually I will probably return to TotK, probably. I still haven't beaten TotK yet. For whatever reason I couldn't get into and enjoy TotK at launch like I did with BotW. Recently I've been watching others first playthroughs of BotW. I don't know if it's just because I've started watching recent playthroughs but it seems to me that new players starting their first playthrough of BotW is a rising thing at the moment. It seems like it might be starting to trend at the moment. I could be wrong though. I am considering starting a new playthrough of BotW myself. I do miss the old Zelda formula and hope it's not abandoned completely or that they return to it for some future Mainline Zelda titles. But I also enjoy BotW and TotK. I do want to have the desire to get back into TotK. I do want to enjoy that game. And I am sure I will once I return to it and get into it. I really have no idea what the point of my comment was going to be. And I don't know where to go from here. But here is my comment anyways. (Sarcastically) You're welcome.
I work in a place where most employees are gamers, and from what I can gather many just didn't want more BotW. Like it was cool as a one off, but more "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" open world with no dungeons and a mediocre non-linear story isn't what people wanted. Like my grandma loved BotW (beat it on Master mode iirc), but I gave her my copy of TotK and even she said it was bad. Yet Nintendo is doubling down on this. Personally, I'm hoping EoW will be better, but I was also baited by TotK supposedly having dungeons and sky islands, so I ain't trusting shit.
I find the combat in BOTW much more enjoyable despite the weapon durability. With the rune abilities, you can do very powerful combos that require skills , while in TOTK, half of the time you are stuck in the menu wheel and spamming arrows. The biggest differences in my opinion , in Breath of the Wild ,the world is your playground but in Tears of the Kingdom, YOU ARE the playground.
It's something I started to dislike really quick and it's the fact that the sheika slate's runes and champion abilities were designed to be quick and easy to activate and rarely stops you for more than a second, the flow of combat in totk on the other hand gets constantly interrupted when switching arrows, the zonai abilities all take too long to be immediately useful and don't inherently have combat capabilities built in and the sages' abilites are cool but activating them is horribly inconsistent Bonus point any group of regular enemies get completely trivialized by the smoke shroom and since combat didn't feel that great in my eyes due to the aforementioned points I stockpiled those shrooms and made heavy use of them
It’s crazy to me they didn’t let you at least make your own arrows that you could quickly equip. Even if you had to do it in a shop or ahead of time. I think the menu would have been way less tedious if they at least gave us a way to make our own custom arrows in huge groups.
@@Ray-dl5mpimagine cycling through 100 arrows to find the one that you want Oh wait, you don't have to imagine because that's basically how the game is now 😑
How many different kind of arrows are you guys using? I just sort by most used or highest strength depending on what the situation calls for, I found having to continously warp to shops to sell stuff and buy more arrows to be far more tedious than spending half a second to pop a bomb on an arrow
@@Lucarioguild7 well yeah, spending half a second to attach a bomb to an arrow EVERY TIME is a LOT more tedious than just using a bomb arrow 😂 you could even just equip bomb arrows in botw and just use several without the need of fusion.
Maybe but I think totk was just to much of the same thing with some head scratching choices that made no sense, like there horrible bow and arrow menu .
lol Nop. First of, 10 dollars is not that big of a difference in that bracket. But more than that, while BotW sales were always consistently high during 6 years, TotK sales started to rapidly decline almost immediately. Meaning that, if the trend keeps on going, those 10K units of difference will grow larger in the next quarter.
@@garytheprogressivelibertar560 That doesn't make sense, it had some really weird and bad menu choices but that alone wouldn't make the game sell worse obviously
In a vacuum, totk is just a more complete and refined version of botw, but I still enjoyed botw more by virtue of experiencing that world for the first time. For the next Zelda, I really want them to dwelve more into big, populated, and fleshed-out cities. It's the natural step to spice up their open world formula.
Bingo. TOTK feels like too much to figure out to feel like you’re experiencing what it has to offer. BOTW you didn’t have to do anything… and the experience was amazing.
@@ajborowski TOTK kinda feels like BOTW but they throw two more games on top of it. So people is like, fuck it, BOTW is already huge and completely, to fully enjoy Tears would drive someone mad without glitches. Then there stuff people like about BOTW that isn't in Tears like Master Mode, Champions Ballad, trail of the sword.
@@user-wb8iu1hl6iThey're right, totk is bloated with useless stuff while botw feels more intentional (even if that game is also full of nothing burgers)
No matter what the true reasons are (there is certainly more than one reason), many people will be quick to project their own feelings into the fact that TOTK sold 10k units less than BOTW this quarter For some, they don’t like TOTK, so they’ll say it’s because of quality It’s also possible that some people bought BOTW, were disappointed by it, and decided not to get the sequel It’s also true that BOTW is 60 or less, and TOTK is 70 dollars, so Nintendo actually had higher paying customers for TOTK than BOTW Some games that are vocally disliked still sell more than their successor games: New Super Mario Bros U DX is stilil higher than Mario Wonder, Super Mario Party is higher that Superstars, BDSP is higher than Legends Arceus, and even Sword & Shield are still 1 million units ahead of Scarlet & Violet.
Rather than parroting my TotK opinions, I'd just like to point out how unique everyone's feelings are on the game. Personally speaking, I really disliked BotW, loved TotK, watched several hours-long essays about how TotK is a bad sequel/game, agreed with them, and yet still came out enjoying TotK.
I find it amusing when people are confused why they don't like TOTK when they literally spent 100 hours in BOTW, so they're exploring the exact same land and wondering why they don't feel a sense of wonder seeing the same stuff. The best way to play TOTK is to NEVER play BOTW because TOTK is the actual finished version of BOTW, but it's the same land so BOTW will spoil that experience of wonder for them.... as short lived as that wonder will be until they realize they're just going to be killing hundreds of bokoblins, finding 1000 korok seeds, finding 100+ shrines with breakable weapons... yeah the wonder will not last long. When I think about it... the best way to play BOTW or TOTK is not to play either one at all.
I played botw and totk for my first Zelda games back to back cause I wanted to see what the hype was about. I played botw and had times of fun with zero nostalgia, I hated how easy the combat was, the lack of story structure. After playing totk I felt like this is what botw was always supposed to be. The shrines felt so much more rewarding and vibey. Finding different bosses and fusing weapons was absolutely sick. The story was fun esp cause I did all the memories in order all at once then went to do my final missions so it felt like watching a movie. I hated how they handled the temple stories but loved those bosses and the music. Don’t even get me started on the colgera boss. And to top off learning that Zelda was the dragon this whole time was crazy
I feel like this is really more solid proof in favor of my personal sentiment, Breath Of The Wild is just kind of better. I wanted a deeper world from TOTK and instead it feels like we just got a more complicated one.
In terms of revenue though I’m sure Nintendo is pleased. With the higher price point, TOTK brought in something like $13.3m during the quarter, while BOTW only brought in around $12m. TOTK itself also doesn’t necessarily exist to sell a ton of copies. It’s an entry point into the $70 game market for Nintendo. They knew by pricing it at $70 they would take a hit, but they calculated (correctly) that enough people would buy it that it would still perform comparatively to BOTW strictly from a revenue perspective. They likely expected a slight dip in revenue, but that was the price to pay to gauge consumer demand for a $70 game, and slowly acclimate gamers to a higher price point for their big first party titles. When the next console rolls around they’ll probably make a ton more money by pricing everything at that $70 premium, and they can thank TOTK for opening the door to that for them. I’m a business guy so if I were running Nintendo, I would’ve done the same thing. It’s a brilliant business move tbh.
IDK, he's made it very clear that he is conflicted about Tears and does not want to encourage the kind of discourse found on so many other videos. He even calls it out, asking people to stop it in this one.
i've always been one of those people that will want to play the first one before playing the squeal when it comes to signal player series/franchise I've never played
Except that totk is not a sequel: the story of botw is totally absent in totk, nobody remembers what hapoened before, things changed without an explanation. Is more like an alternate universe
Also does the sales for BoTW include the Wii U? Allot of people forget it was released on the Wii U as well so many people might’ve bought that version and then again when they got a switch.
That’s irrelevant to what this video is discussing. We’re not talking about how BOTW has sold more copies overall than TOTK (obviously it has. It’s been out for way longer.) What we’re discussing is it STILL selling more copies every month. In the present. Like in the last quarter of the year, it outsold TOTK. That’s the interesting part.
@@abdieljove2011 exactly. Wii U is irrelevant and it's honestly insane that the 7+ year old BOTW is outselling the 1 year old TOTK at this point even though on paper it's supposed to be the older worse game
A couple things worth remembering: -botw was the Switch's launch title, meaning it has a far more ubiquitous legacy than totk has. -Botw is ten bucks cheaper, meaning for the average person nebulously buying games either casually or as a gift, it's the easier pick, especially because the two are similar looking from the outset. -Totk reached twenty million, quite a bit faster than botw did, meaning it naturally going to have a sharper plateau. -Totk is a sequel, meaning botw is going to sell faster, both because sequels tend not to sell as well as previous instalments, but also because most people want to play the previous entry first, and then the sequel later, if at all. -Totk has entered the prerequisite "Zelda community backlash" period, which every Zelda game goes through, wherein tons of several hour long think pieces get made on how the game is bad actually, which leads casual players to act accordingly and avoid the game. -We are near the end of the current Switch's life cycle, meaning there a lot more used and cheaper Switches available, so people who had been holding out are probably jumping in now, and are naturally going to pick the earlier and cheaper zelda game to try first. In general, this news shouldn't be that surprising to anyone. It'll really be only after the two games reach their total lifetime sales that any substantive analysis on the game's lifetime goals can really be made. It also worth remembering totk is newer, had its period of hype, and now there are lots of people interested in the previous entry because its started to reach its first window of nostalgia. The sales of these two games have and will continue to ebb and flow with the culture. I'm not making any points about which game is better, I'm just saying making any definite assumptions about what this means in terms of that is foolhardy at this point.
Agreed. I think another thing to point out is that Tears of the Kingdom is a much more overwhelming game than Breath of the Wild as well, both in terms of content and mechanics. The 1st game is a lot simpler than the sequel with tons of extra mechanics to deal with that just don't exist in BotW, thus making it far easier to pick up and play. Heck, one of my sisters played the 1st game and loved it, but has yet to play through TotK, which I highly suspect has to do with how overwhelming it is. Even I as a more experienced gamer had to take a long break from the game just because of how much stuff there was to do and it was starting to burn me out for desiring to play more. I got back to the game again this summer and have started pushing for the end game, but even then there is a lot of content left. When you begin resorting to using broken mechanics like the air scooter and other shortcuts to speed things through, you know it's overwhelming.
I love the comment about the "Zelda community backlash period". With the possible exception of OoT, I'm pretty sure every 3D/perspective view Zelda game has had a backlash period of some kind. And with the exception of Skyward Sword, all of them eventually recovered from that backlash period and went on to become well-loved. BotW went from being "innovative and revolutionary" to "too open, directionless, and empty", but now, people are coming back around to BotW simply from comparison to TotK.
Eh, sequels rarely sell better then the original, but also people that buy sequels alone (which Zelda's lack of continuity is a BLESSING for) want to check out previous entries.
I feel like someone said the sequels don’t sell as wlll thing and people ran with it without checking data. GTA 5 sold more than 4, fallout 4 sold more than 3, elder scrolls 5 sold more than 4. For a majority of game franchises sequels sell better, not worse
@@zealousinitiate3697It’s more so direct sequels rather than numbered sequels, since the games you mentioned have nothing to do with their predecessors. Pokémon Gold/Silver sold worse than Red/Blue/Green, Mario Galaxy 2 sold worse then Galaxy, and Majora’s Mask worse than Ocarina of Time, just as a few examples. And so it’s rare that those kinds of sequels sell better than the OG.
@@Nastara In general old nintendo fans are miserable. Source: I'm an old pokemon fan lmao we're probably one of the more miserable groups out there bc the negative people are half right
@@aneasteregg8171 The "loyal fanbase" is the reason they changed to this current formula to begin with. Y'all complained about Zelda being "stale" with Skyward Sword. You reap what you sow.
One thing I’d add is on top of TotK being $70, it came out during a time where inflation is affecting everything. I can see people waiting for the game to go on sale.
I like to think it's Switch newcomers buying their new consoles with that legendary game that everyone and their grandma's been talking aka BOTW. BOTW makes for a great introduction to the console, whereas TOTK being a direct sequel with different mechanics makes it weirder to start. Both are fantastic games that sold amazing and Nintendo's happy with the sells numbers regardless.
yeah. botw is pretty much babies second switch game (mk8d being the first) so it makes sense that it's still selling really well most people who wanted tears of the kingdom already bought it so 90+% of the new sales are gonna be newcomers and they just aren't gonna buy the more complicated and elaborate sequel when they can buy the cheaper and more straightforward original that has established itself as THEE must have switch game for the last 7 years
Not really - I didn't think of Botw for merely more than a second with Tears. TOTK is totally its own self-contained, Complete entity. Verticality, exciting Fusion mechanics that's at the worst level, is simply addictive binging fun. And at is most refined, are those absolute Masterpieces and works of Art that are the ''Skill kill'' videos using all manner of Recall & Ultrahand etc like it's witchcraft. Bunning all that Pro stuff, you can just casual the game like me [spoilers] get the Master Sword early etc.
I actually purchased BOTW after first playing TOTK because TOTK made me interested in the full story. In my opinion, Nintendo did a great job making two games that can be played in either order, with me viewing BOTW more like I would a prequel story.
I honestly feel like I wasted 70 bucks, because I just couldn't finish TOTK, it felt like I was doing work, a chore. I thought maybe I wasn't playing it right, but I kept getting dissapointed. Like "Oh here's another cave, I'm only exploring so I can get ANOTHER BUBBUL GEM. I eventually just avoided shrines. MORE KOROKS?! man....
This makes plenty of sense since due to TotK being a direct follow-up to BotW, most people who haven’t played BotW would rather do so first rather than immediately jumping into TotK. Which’s probably the best course of action, as it’d probably be hard to go back to BotW due to all the additions and improvements TotK adds. Along with BotW being a lot cheaper to get nowadays due to regularly going on sale, which TotK hasn’t really done yet due to still being fairly new. But hey, the sales of one game bumping up another’s in a kind of symbiotic way is nothing but a net positive for Nintendo, since a sale is a sale at the end of the day.
That's good breath of the Wild is a far better game, Tears of the Kingdom was fun but we'd just had that style of Zelda and gimmicking it up to the max felt a bit of a cashgrab
I just bought botw for the first time, I didn’t realise totk was the same map, if I knew that I’d of just bought that one, I assumed totk was like a proper sequel
Spicy take salad time; I didn't enjoy TotK, but did enjoy BotW, and myself and others are going to suggest BotW to new people asking for suggestions. THAT SAID, TotK is slightly more expensive and there's likely people out there that mistakenly believe they need to play BotW to "understand" TotK like more "traditional" sequels and intend to play both eventually.
TotK has become a divisive game now that the hype has gone away and people can have a discussion about not liking it without getting attacked by fans of it. Didn’t like it much either. To me, it’s worse than BotW in almost every way, which is not helped by being $10 more and being such a direct sequel. To me, it’s completely natural that BotW would sell more. It’s the better game by far to me. I’d refund the game if I could, whereas I don’t regret buying BotW on both WiiU and Switch in the slightest
@@dragonicbladex7574 people saying its the Zelda cycle are just using that as a defence. TOTK has some very real problems detracting from it that many are more than willing to ignore because it’s Zelda
@@dragonicbladex7574 it didn’t happen with BotW. The last game it happened with was Skyward Sword, a game that many Zelda fans were convinced was just going through the hate cycle, but is still a game I don’t like at all. Maybe don’t invalidate others for not liking the game by saying it’s just a cycle?
I do feel the need to add that BOTW also had some sales in the last little bit, I saw it going for 40$. That definitely could explain some difference too since totk wasn’t on sale
TotK did not sell as well because its just BOTW 2.0. It needed its own identity and it instead relies on the fact that BotW was a thing. Its disappointing in that sense.
It's so interesting to see how hard TOTK plateued. It feels like the game sold 20 million copies almost instantly and then hasn't sold another copy since lol. If you're interested in the breakdown as to why a lot of people prefer BOTW over TOTK (and why some people actually DISLIKE TOTK), Skitty Bitty did an excellent 3.5 hour (yes really) video on it
mandatory reminder that the sales numbers we have are ONLY physical retail sales, not eshop sales. And Piracy isn't as widespread today as it was on Switch's launch, sure there were methods from very early on with RCM, but very few people were doing it, nowadays if you buy a second-hand switch odds are it's modded already, so piracy now is much more commonplace than it was early on
It's an interesting dichotomy between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Both were really fun imo, but definitely had glaring flaws. I think the reason why Breath of the Wild has sold more is because it's more approachable from a beginner's perspective; Tears of the Kingdom does grant the player more freedom, but that freedom could be somewhat overwhelming for a brand new player. Additionally, I think the sheer size of Tears is intimidating as well, as I got the vibe it suffered from the "too much game" curse DK64 is often criticized for.
Anecdotally, my sister got a switch recently. And when my brother, her roommates, and I (all Switch veterans)were discussing what games she should get with the voucher, we all kind of agreed that BOTW is important to experience first. Especially if you’re in the camp that TOTK is the superior experience, I think that makes it all the more worthwhile to play BOTW first.
There’s 4 reasons I can think of for TotK sales slowing down like it did. 1. Switch is in it’s final year 2. Same map as BotW 3. Some Zelda fans dislike the current direction 4. 70 dollar price tag
not enough changes for hyrule, not enough sky islands (big ones like in the beginning), the below really empty i dropped soon after i discovered the void underground, most disapointing thing ever for me, just 20 hours played 100 hours of botw
I'll probably get crucified for this, but BotW is simply a much better game. Better puzzle design, better abilities, better atmosphere, and arguably a better story.
I got TotK a while ago and got a little way into it. It seems so much heavier on the busy work than BotW that I lost any interest in playing it. I spend enough time at work already.
BotW and TotK despite being set in the same world, feel very different and while I prefer TotK, I can absolutely understand why people would prefer BotW.
The thing is, preference only really comes into play for the people who have bought both. When we're talking sales, we've gotta ask why some of these people aren't even interested in playing TotK to see what they prefer. IMO, while the factors of BotW being first and having the longer reputation as a must-own Switch game are true, I wonder if part of it has to do with the experience of BotW. Even though it's not as big as TotK, it's still a big game that you can spend a long time playing. I think it's very possible that there are more casual fans who feel like "I enjoyed that, but I've had my fill for now and I want to play something more different than its sequel."
I think “Breath of the Wild” as a name holds a lot of weight on it’s own. It was a huge talking point for many years. Almost like how “Skyrim” is basically a more iconic name than the series it is a part of
I have a hot take. The best parts of tears of the kingdom were the starting island and the rainy thunder island thing you had to explore in order to get to minerus mask. Why ? Those were the only parts of tears of the kingdom that had a fresh and new identity. It felt new and exciting and I really hoped for more of those large sized sky islands. Traversing them made me feel like Nintendo figured out a perfect mix between new and old Zelda.... But yea no. Once you land back in Hyrule it's just recycelt breath of the wild with a ton of gimmicks
Likely those who did not get BOTW previously, have noticed it now courtesy of TOTK. Decited to purchase both, or want to play BOTW first, before getting TOTK. -There is a lot of new Switch owners so it kind of makes sense. This might ably many players who had Switch years ago as well. Just think about it. Seven years old kids then, are now teens.
Bizarre seeing all the people saying they didn’t like ToTK because it was the same as BotW after the long wait and then all the people who are saying BotW is a far superior game even when comparing them now side by side. I know they’re different groups of people but how can two people look at the same thing and have diametrically opposite opinions?
BotW/TotK are complicated games with design that's hard to analyse. I personally think that the "TotK is the same as BotW" criticism is similarly misguided as the "BotW is just an Ubisoft game" criticism, it's surface level. There are things from BotW that didn't change that really should've, but there are also lots of things that did change, sometimes for the worse.
Breath of the wild was one of the few big Nintendo games you can buy at launch. Tears of the Kingdom comes at a time where people have a vast library games available to choose from. Makes total sense to me
This doesn't surprise me. Honestly. TOTK didn't impress me nearly as much as BOTW And it's not even just that it's a sequel the presentation was.... Choppy? The biggest selling point were the sandbox mechanics and save for a small subset of players that's not why people play LoZ games. It wasn't marketed very well and pretty much relied on sequel hype to move sales. Which, save for a vocal minority, wasn't going to hold sales momentum nearly as much as Nintendo hoped it would. Ultimately the general vibe of the reviews was that it was a great game but not nearly as much of a stand out success in the way it's predecessor was. So people took that to mean you might as well just play BOTW, (which had a lot more post-launch interest behind it.) unless you're a diehard fan. Plust TOTK boosted BOTW sales for people who hadn't played the first game yet.
The thing is totk is a sequel. The people who wanna play botw/totk will start with botw. Some won't like botw, meaning fewer people will play totk. Of course, there are those who will play totk first but that percentage is really tiny. Upon totk release, almost all the players that loved botw rushed to get totk..those that didn't didnt get totk. The majority of rest who hadn't play botw but was interested in totk decided to play botw first.
People bought into the ToTK hype and purchased a Switch to experience it. A year later, they're looking for more Zelda games the Switch offers, resulting in a BoTW bump.
I played the hell out of BOTW. I explored EVERYWHERE. Then TOTK came out... with mostly the same world. I just couldn't make myself do it again. Oh, but there's the underground! And it SUCKS! It's horrible and I hate it! The sky areas are kinda neat sure but... I was just done at that point. I wanted something new, not a glorified expansion. I tried but I've yet to do even one dungeon in TOTK.
Breath of the Wild was hyped up alongside the release of an exciting and fresh idea for a new Nintendo console and was a bit of a major breakthrough for the series that had people, myself included, who never played a Zelda game before buying it. It was THE game to get for early adopters and word of mouth had this game considered the greatest of all time for years. I am not surprised that it’s sold more and continues to sell really well despite TOTK coming out.
Crazy to me all of the sentiment that people love BOTW so much more than TOTK for its story and atmosphere. I’ve never been able to finish BOTW due to the open-ended nature of the questlines, whereas I’ve fully completed TOTK and vastly preferred it overall. I find it neat there’s such staunchly different viewpoints on it.
Arlo it's kinda not fair to say "We don't need to argue which is the better game" and then explain one of the ways you believe TOTK is implicitly better. And I understand you're merely posturing that consumers, given the choice of one experience, or bigger version of that same experience, that you would think the value proposition is in the sequel. However consumers, even casuals, have more consideration than just amount of content, and for that reason I'm going to ignore your plea to not hear another criticism of TOTK and explain with as much brevity as I can muster, which I often can't muster, the subjectivity of that you ignore when you generalize experiences like that. -It's often quality over quantity -Options are the key of this new Zelda design -Options for the player should mean that TOTK's quantity is giving both -But, Options don't always equal quality -The options are numerous and daunting to some players -Thankfully problems allow a lot of solutions -Unfortunately a lot of these problems are overall easy, and allow for easy solutions that ignore mechanics -Said easy solutions are often one size fits all -The games interface is so slow and clumsy that creating good solutions is often harder than brute forcing or bypassing -the game could be considered from some perspectives to be like that shape puzzle where every shape fits in the square hole -This is also ignoring subjective debates on how fun and varied the Sky Islands and the Depths actually are, how the story may or may not be worse, if the visual story telling of the environment is as good as BOTW, etc. -There are a lot of short comings of BOTW but perhaps we can describe them as growing pains. There are a lot of valid reasons to think TOTK is either inferior OR fails to be a satisfying sequel and as tired as the argument seems right now, it's always beneficial to talk about. -Like why the sequel to a game with such a strong supporting cast and back story deci-Secret Stone, Secret Stone, Demon King, Demon King, Secret Stone, Demon King, Secret Stone...
"-It's often quality over quantity" both games are obviously quantity over quality considering all you find in either games is breakable weapons, korok seeds and shrines. In the sequel they bother to make actual different bosses this time and a more acceptable enemy variety, but they reuse the same land - yeah, use the Same land in a game where the main draw is exploration. Genius move nintendo. Having a dull sky and underground map does not make up for it, there's nothing to find there (nothing WORTH finding.) They spent years on making this "sequel" and only bothered to make ONE new town. BOTW = Unfinished bland sandbox demo. Not worth it. TOTK = the finished version with a bit of extra stuff, also not worth it, especially for those that have played BOTW for a long time. I think people should just say "stuff" instead of "content" at this point, I Hate that word now and interestingly it's when games started getting really dull that the word started spreading in popularity...
I have a few pointers on why some of these things might be the case (at least for me): on a basic level, there is nothing wrong with the game. The problems are that whatever you did or gathered in the first game gets fully reset, yet its the same world but with different abillities. Wich is one of the issues acctually. Some points on the map you can easilly see the areas the devs wanted you to use the old abilities with. Before you could cross streams and rivers easilly with the cryo ability. Now im struggling to even cross one at all if i dont have heaps of stamina or random wooden stuffs nearby to make a bridge with. Then there is the fact that suddenly ALL of the guardians and sheika stuff just... straight up vanished. Almost as if it never happened at all? For me thats a huge blow and i was verry dissapointed. They didnt expand on the games lore. They just... have overwriten what was allready established and destroyed a lot of the world building along with it. Like on one of the locations in botw/totk there is this big wall with heaps of guardians near it. In totk. All of them are gone and in its place is a completely OUT of place bokoblin camp with lots of enemies.... why? This used to be a pretty major highway in the game its lore. Now its suddenly blocked of... i thought we would see efforts in trying to rebuild hyrule. And thats not to mention how they did the great plateau dirty. Where is the shrine of resurection? Anyway. That and to me the fuse abillity seems like a good idea butnin practice im scrolling for 15 minutes to try and find an item to attach to my arrow. Its clunky, annoying and it kills all momentum in a fight when i need to read through an entire diary just to fight that one item. I put 10 hours into the game after 1 year of ownership. It was always a risk when they wanted to reuse botw its map. And... the changes are not good imo. Its like a friend that you kind of remember but he has changed so much you dont know if he is the same guy or not. You cant connect with the story and map beceause it all feels so out of place. Its the same world but also not? It doesnt really work imo...
Any new person willing to start playing a Zelda game would likely be buying the first one to play them in order. And many parents buying for the kids would choose the $10 cheaper game if the gameplay similar
i would say. between the 2 breath is also the better told story. tears has its moments but story wise its drops the ball a lot. the building gimick may not be enough to bring more sales and the more mix reception on reviews would also affect sell of the game. not to mention with the switch 2 around the corner that would also slow down sales
I'm not surprised, honestly. I bought and played the hell out of and beat BOTW, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. But TOTK came and I bought it and... I haven't touched it. I didn't even start it up yet. I think I gorged myself on the feast, the absolute banquet, that was BOTW so much, that I just needed to have a break from Zelda. Knowing how... many... hoouuurrrssss... I put into BOTW, and that TOTK is even bigger and longer and everything, it goes from feeling like a brand new adventure to, like, almost like a chore. It's too big, too soon. It would've been more palatable, I think, if TOTK debuted with the Switch 2. That would've been far enough apart. The hunger would have had time to build.
No DLC is still a huge pain point for players and potential buyers. I don't know how a company sells 20 million copies and never even bothered to plan at least 1 expansion.
TOTK is much less beginner friendly control wise, my dad became very frustrated trying to use ultra hand and dpad fuse mechanics, whereas BOTW was much simpler mechanics to use.
I'd go as far to say that the controls and UI are actually outright bad and severely hamper enjoyment of the game. It's very clunky and filled with insane design decisions that I can't believe passed playtesting.
Ganondorf looked like such a dumbass. Even in his final form, that dragon had such a braindead goofy look. As much as I hate BOTW I at least think the whole "mutated messed up" ganon was an original version, and the pink flaming boar was far more majestic looking than the mentally handicapped looking dragon we get in totk.
TotK didn’t sell as much as BotW because there isn’t a Big Fat Review of it yet
now thats a headspace i can rally behind
There hasn’t been any review of it so far
True that.
Arlo doesn’t seem nearly as much passionate about this game do dedicate so many hours of his time to it yet.
hoping this happens though
The reason BOTW is selling more is cause of the Wii U sales of course
You know the Wii U version of BotW has been out of print for years and the Wii U eShop was closed last year, so it was literally impossible to buy it during the last quarter, right?
ahh that explains everything
Present!
@@XanderVJ I think he was joking XD
@@XanderVJ you know there’s still physical versions of BotW to be bought, right?
I kind of understand it- TOTK is a sequel, costs $10 more, and is pretty similar to BOTW. I’m sure a lot of people are satisfied with just the original
Yeah, makes complete sense in my eyes too
Exactly. The game is too similar to BotW to the point where it kinda suffers for it.
Yeah. I think the consensus is that if you haven’t played either, play BOTW
totk sucks
trial of the sword was better than totk
Lmao, in Poland right now ToTK is 2 usd cheaper than BoTW and both are on promotion - BoTW for the first time ever (at this price, it was like 5% cheaper sometimes, never 20%) and ToTK got cheaper than within few months of premiere. I really think beyond the first few month hype it doesn't sell well in general as a game.
I found TOTK more fun to play mechanically. I return for the sandbox play. I found BOTW more meaningful and hence more impactful. I return for the story and atmosphere. Nintendo did a marvellous job on both, but the biggest "mistake" was downplaying the lore of BOTW in TOTK to make it more "accessible" for new players. This diminished the meaning quite significantly for me. What used to be mystique and intrigue turned into plain video game geometry.
Wait can you elaborate on that last part?
@@TiredOx7536 What they probably meant with the last part is that TotK's world just feels like nothing more than "a video game world". Or worded differently, it's significantly more difficult to actually immerse yourself in TotK's world than Botw's world, and Hyrule no longer feels alive like it used to
Simply can't agree more. All the amazing and interesting lore butchered to make a soulless sequel. Massive waste of story.
Yeah, the immersion in TOTK was just fully broken to me. The world couldn't decide if it was feeling happy or gloomy, the characters couldn't decide if they recognize Link or not and while the world having much more stuff in it is nice on paper, it doesn't feel like you are a sole hero exploring a mostly empty and lonely world that has been suffering for decades anymore
And my other big critique is that that I hate how weapons work in TOTK. In BOTW it was always cool to find a new weapon and to just start using it. But in the sequel, all you ever find is rusting crap or materials you can use to fuse stuff with yourself. Sure I acnowledge the amout of flexibility and self choice that this gives, but the entire excitement of just finding cool weapons lying around or dropping from enemies is entirely gone. Basically they switched it out for options, but too many options just gets overwhelming at some point
@@tom-ateI mean there's an argument to be made that you're not quite exploring a lonely and dead world anymore since you kinda showed up in botw and gave people some time to rebuild and stuff
That extra $10 aint doing totk any favors
Honestly it's the only thing that stopped me from buying it on release. I will get it eventually, but it will be bought used to save those $10.
It's the same price everywhere I look as BotW. $60
Yep. Realized that almost a year ago when the sales started to slow down.
@@gododoofI always look at it as £60 + $10 DLC
ToTK can easily be $60 + $25 DLC
The content is huuuuge compared to BotW, overwhelmingly more compared to BOTW + Champion's Ballad DLC
@@goonerOZZ Did I miss a version of BotW that had the DLC bundled with it? What the fuck are you talking about?
The reason why BOTW is selling more is because it has Kass. There is no other logical explanation
This
I think this is because BOTW is a more accessible game for people new to the zelda series. Being the first game in a two-part series means that new players are more likely to gravitate to the first game. TOTK was most appealing to players who had already played BOTW and were looking for more of that style of play. Since most of these players have already bought TOTK it is unlikely that TOTK will surpass BOTW in lifetime sales.
A sequel rarely sells as much or more than the prequel for that reason, people don't usually want to jump into the second part without playing the first. On top of that, anyone who bought BotW and ultimately didn't like the new style as much isn't likely to buy TotK at all, so it was never going to sell as much.
And also because Botw is just a much better game.
Yeah but the " *still* selling faster " is kinda crazy considering it's been out for 7 years and one would assume most people with a Switch already bought it
@@alibabaschultz352lmao sure
@@alibabaschultz352It emphatically is not, and I'd be interested to know how the hell you came to that conclusion.
BotW feels blatantly empty and unfinished in comparison, now. That said, it's- surprisingly- a significantly different game.
There's also a surprisingly large amount of people that played TOTK first, liked it, and then wanted to try out BOTW
I'd be curious what ppl who played totk first, then botw, which one they prefer
@@timothyn4699 Months later, and I'm still curious about this. Cause I will ALWAYS recommend to play TOTK before BOTW just for the sake of progression of cohesive/structured design. Don't want to jump the shark early imo.
@@Hadeks_Marow it's a good question, I feel like totk is a fair more mechanically advanced, but botw has a better sense of awe and mood/atmosphere to it. I prefer botw I think for that, if I could only have played one, that made more an impact. However, part of the power of botw is in the mystery and the unknown. If you don't have that as much, I wonder if it would be as enjoyable. It's also special in being the first of it's kind, and exploring the vast world, where totk being second makes it less enjoyable
that said, if you truly went in blind with totk first, maybe it'd still have a powerful effect, but instead of mystery, it'd be more a sense of loss
@@timothyn4699 I think they would come to appreciate just how "methodical" botws design would be and more appreciative of the combat mechanics.
@@Hadeks_Marow come to think of it, by me being a long time Zelda fan, and having played like Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, those soundtracks are solid with strong driving melodies. The difference/contrast in those games versus botw really helped add to the atmosphere and feeling of loss or that something was off and missing. If I had only played botw...I probably would've still gotten a good sense of mood/loss, but not as strongly bc of my history w the series
I didn't end up finished totk
the more restrictive combat of botw might help lend to the feeling, but I'd wonder if it would become boring after playing totk, comparatively
do you have a preference between the two?
Interesting topic. But what I’m more interested in is when we are getting Arlo’s: Big Fat Review of Tears of the Kingdom?
@@vivi1649Arlo's Medium Fat Review
Agreed, we will not talk sales until we get that far review on our subscription feed
he’s scared to tell everyone it’s bad lol
@@verygoodfreelancer It’s hardly a bad game. You can argue disappointing but it def ain’t bad
@@benjthewhite the plot, the aesthetics, the music, everything i enjoyed about zelda totally gone. all the items are reduced to planned obsolescence, and all the lore that meant so much to the franchise previously reduced to like, item pickups you churn through. No real level design. Vibes gone. I think it represents a real artistic step backwards for nintendo.
Quantity ("adding more") does not equal quality ("a better game").
This isn't an argument about which game is better. This is an objective statement to point out how, if you're gonna give reasoning, it shouldn't be relying on false equivalencies. More doesn't mean better. Better game design means better. If we are gonna argue which is better _(which, we are not about to do that here, please),_ then that's the lens we need to look at it through. Not through the lens of "which has 'more' content".
A walking sim where you just hold W for hours as you experience new environment after new environment isn't a good game just because of how much content they put into the walking. And likewise, adding more environments to walk through doesn't make the game any better, especially if you don't like those new environments or they changed something else that you did like (like the walking physics). There is such a thing as negative quality additions. These are known as "detractions". So not only does "more" not always equal "better", it can just as easily equal "worse".
Again, I don't have a favorite. I'm just tired of this bad argument relying on bad logic. To be critical is to critique something for it's faults. There is nothing critical when using the braindead expression of "it has more, so checkmate, it's the better game". There's a lot more nuance to the topic and, if people took it more seriously (on both sides) to take that aspect into consideration, maybe the topic wouldn't be as annoying every time where we "wouldn't" have to keep hearing people repeat the same non-critical bullet points (which happens with both sides of the argument, but "it has more" just happens to be the worst offender of uncriticalness).
right! even though it has more content, when i watched someone else play totk i didn't really like the gameplay, a lot of elements just seemed janky and unsatisfying. botw seemed a lot more cohesive and just better so im playing that one instead
sorry not to argue over which game is better haha, just affirming that ppl don't always think the extra content in totk = better
I've used this metaphor repeatedly in this regard, but the thing about TOTK is that it's essentially Mario Galaxy 2. Not just in terms of development - both being additional content that got so big that they became separate games - but also in terms of cultural impact.
People don't remember Galaxy 2 much. Not that they don't like it - they don't *remember* it. Galaxy 1 practically defined the Wii, just like how BOTW defined the Switch. They aren't necessarily "better" than their sequels - but they were new. They set the foundation that Galaxy 2/TOTK would build upon. That kind of impact is the psychological equivalent of lightning-in-a-bottle.
Consider Toby Fox, for instance. Sure, he and co. are making Deltarune, and it does a lot of things even better (or at least just as good) as Undertale... but most people out-of-the-loop will probably still think "oh, Toby Fox, that's the Undertale guy, right?".
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As for the comparison between BOTW and TOTK directly, I think the biggest issue is that BOTW spent almost seven years being the only Zelda game of its kind. When you spend that long between releases, as the pioneer of that new gameplay style, of course people are going to take the game and push it to the limit. That's also why people view BOTW with such rosy glasses - there's a lot of things that game does wrong (and a lot of criticisms thrown at TOTK are *more* applicable to BOTW!), but it's easy to overlook those things when you have nothing else to compare it to.
There's a lot of people who talk about how TOTK "fell off" for them - they played it, they loved it, and they haven't gone back to it since. But the thing is... that's how most people felt about BOTW, too. I still distinctly remember people feeling that way, way back when. I played BOTW in 2017, loved it just as much as everyone else, and then did not play the game for the next five years. I did make an attempt at a replay, once, but I ran out of steam before even reaching Kakariko.
And it makes sense. They're huge, enormous games, and they really aren't replayable in the same way that older Zelda games are. That's not a bad thing, but it's another major difference between the two styles. The fact that TOTK is "The Sequel to BOTW" doesn't help matters; if it's a sequel, you should play the first game first, right?
I love TOTK. I think it's a significant improvement on BOTW in many, many ways. But it was never, ever going to make the same splash that BOTW did. Nothing could.
galaxy 2 was just not the same gameplay improved
people didn't remember because it was a bad game, maybe a lot of people drop the game very soon even, that's why they don't remember
totk i dropped after 20 hours, soon after i visited the below that was empty as hell, the sky islands had enough content and the first ones were interesting, the other ones no
I heard that they made more islands but miyamoto said it was too much or something, the below they just copy paste inverse the hyrule map and didn't have enough time/budget
wtf
also i would have liked some meteor or something else changed the hyrule map
also 100 hours on botw, 20 hours on totk
And also, Botw is just a much much better, more cohesive and elegant work of art.
very well said. i was going to add more to this but i really don’t want to get into a comment war.
@@Alex254561"I heard that they made more islands but Miyamoto said it was too much or something"
God, you people don't know what to invent anymore to make Miyamoto look bad
To be honest, almost no Zelda game is replayable to me. I like them as adventures. After beating one, I feel wrong in going back.
Breath of the Wild is good in the sense that it's so big and exciting that I leave it and always come back to my old file and find new things. I would never restart it though. It's my journey
Arlo: “Let’s just talk sales today, don’t talk in the comments how you didn’t like Tears of the Kingdom”
People in the comments, immediately: “I didn’t like Tears of the Kingdom!!”
We will not be silenced!
But yeah, a lot of people didn't like TotK and now that the honeymoon period is over, we can share why without immediate backlash.
To be fair to them, he then immediately went on an impassioned mini-rant about how TotK is "just BotW but with more." That's not exactly closing a discussion.
Crazy that simply thinking TOTK is a good game is becoming a hot take
@@XParasiteOctoling it’s like Skyward Sword all over again. Which is also why I think in a few years people will look at TotK more fondly.
@@mythosinfinite6736I was just about to comment this. Like he says “don’t talk about why you prefer BotW” and then immediately brings up and elucidates the other side of the argument and it’s like okay, well if you do that you’re just inviting people to defend BotW. Weird to basically say “I’m gonna make a case for one point of view but please don’t disagree with me because I don’t want to hear about it.”
I guess not as many casual players eyes were on this game. Me i had my fun with the game, but when i dropped off it i really dropped off it I have not picked it up again since it came out no special reason i just haven’t felt compelled to play it again.
Yeah but when you get into it again it's like a brand new game. You can do all kinds of different things in it. Yeah burnout happens time to time, but if you space it out over long periods, it stays fun. For me, a good 100-200 hours is about how long i play it before stopping for a bit. I love it. I love both games so much.
same but just after 20 hours, not enough changes, they had the engine, they just had to create more content, they did but clearly not enough
That's what I think. The only people I know who like the game are the people who are obsessed with it. Nobody who just plays it casually. Didn't matter if they did or didn't like/play BOTW either. They also all dropped the game very early on too.
me too but after 200 hours each
I'd say it's the opposite. Totk seems to appeal exclusively to casual players, with its surface level story, basic puzzles, braindead traversal, and an emphasis on content creator-friendly mechanics.
Earlier this year I was at GameStop and these two girls came in, early teens, and they were all excited to get a game. Breath of the Wild. It was fun to see.
I loved Breath of Wild, but I couldn't finish Tears of the Kingdom for some reason. As time goes on I feel that Breath of the Wild will be seen as the better game.
It feels like Ocarina vs Majora again. With BOTW feeling like Ocarina to TOTK's Majora. People that like TOTK more REALLY LIKE it more, but BOTW will always be the more broadly accessible/enjoyed game of the pair. Its THE game to own on Switch just like Ocarina was THE game for N64. Theres nothing TOTK can do to top it, its just never going to have the same legendary status as the game that shook up the 3d zelda formula, its going to be that "weird sequel where they recycled stuff" like Majora was.
@@thefilmdirector1 Which is a shame to me personally because Majora's Mask did so, so much more with reused assets.
I ended up selling my copy of TotK. I had so much stuff left to do, but none of it seemed interesting or meaningful. If I ever want to go back to open world Hyrule, I'll just play BotW again.
@@thefilmdirector1 eh majora was cool because of the sense of dread in the atmosphere that the world and npc’s presented. It felt a lot closer to that in BoTW with so many npc’s talking about the previous calamity and the diminished but still prevalent danger, idk what the atmosphere in ToTK was going for.
Felt like more npc’s were concerned with looking like Mario toads rather than all the weird stuff that just appeared and is still falling out of the sky lol
I have 3x the playtime of BOTW that I do of TOTK...which is weird because TOTK has more content. BOTW just coalesces together better. I was hoping TOTK would be incredible, but it oddly struggled to hold my attention after 2 dungeons. It was essentially just "BOTW again" with not enough innovation. The best part was the tutorial on the Great Sky Island, but that's not worth 70 dollars. I think TOTK really needed to be a new map/world.
I think people were hoping for a better crafted story, the thing BotW was obviously lacking, and instead they got BotW again but with the ability to glue a rock to a stick.
And a pretty bad story, let me ask have you heard the tale of the imprisoning war?
The story wasn't bad exactly. I think it just failed it's delivery. Like the exact same cutscene 4 times kills the vibe and the fragmented nature of the main story where you can view it out of order also kills the vibe. All you need is the one memory with the main twist plot point and all the rest start feeling immediately feel like filler Instead of a story building itself up.
@@raysay1818 idk man seeing these champions act so dumb to the painfully obvious doppelganger running around and link who would see this from his perspective just to not say anything about it is really dumb too. These people just don't act like real people often in totk and that's very immersion breaking
@@AlphaladZXA that's is also very true I forgot to mention the inconsistency with the Zelda decoy. My point was more of that the story had all the elements to be a better told story they just kind of goofed the presentation of it in several ways. The over arching of plot structures are lovely it just doesn't flow correctly. So like is it better? Hard to say exactly
Secret stones? The story was disappointing, especially when you consider the fact of how *easy* it would have been to connect "secret stones" to spiritual stones from OoT. That would have been awesome. And spiritual stones sound cooler than secret stones anyway. For the life of me, I can't figure out why they avoided that moment. Honestly, I think ToTK's story is underrated. But I got hopping mad at the inconsistencies of the sequel. Like Link acting like he'd never seen a Sheikah Slate before ^.^ and that was AFTER the beginning of the game where he's escorting Zelda who was using a Sheikah Slate to document their time underneath Hyrule Castle.
I also think people were hoping for more to do in the world. Or something new to interact with as you went through the game. Sign guy, Koroks, caves, enemies, and shrines are all I can think of off the top of my head. Then, they essentially doubled the size of the map of BoTW, and thought that adding a light mechanic /a few ancient robot npcs / gloom enemies would be enough. The more of ToTK you complete, the more you realize that you're actually just doing the same thing over and over and over again for next to no reward.
I don't think I'll ever finish TOTK, and I've tried at least five or six times to push through it, but I keep getting so bored, and I can't quite work out why. For some reason, BOTW just feels like a tighter, better game to me and I've played through it a bunch of times without ever getting burnt out. The divine beasts are way more fun, and I really enjoy scaling the sky towers and using them to figure out where I want to go next. In TOTK, I get so easily overwhelmed by the sky islands, Hyrule, and then the depths. I just kept running out of mental energy for it all. If I wasn't propping up signs every 5 minutes, I was jumping down wells, or trying to light up all the lightroots in the depths. Maybe my need to complete everything was ruining the fun for me, because there's just so much mindless busywork. BOTW is much, much simpler and I think my scatty little brain needs that to have fun, or I just end up drowning. I'm just now realising that this may be why I've never finished a Ubisoft game either, haha.
Got burnt out too on totk..I got through, but had to take a break for 9 months. It got too exhaustive. I think the reused overworld did it tbh. Botw is better.
that's very interesting. for me this happened, but with the games reversed
Not to be that guy, but this title is incorrect. It is not selling "faster" than TotK. I know the video itself is correct (selling more in the last quarter), but Tears of the Kingdom has only been out for a year and a few months, and it has sold over 20 million copies.
Breath of the Wild took 3 years to sell 20 million copies, and that was with counting the Wii U version (it was at 18m on Switch alone).
So TotK is in fact selling way faster, even if the numbers slowed down already. It took BotW 6 years to get to 30m, and TotK is only 10m behind it after just 1 year.
It won't surpass it, I don't think, but I just had to get that out there. Splatoon 3 had a similar situation, it sold way more way faster but then slowed down significantly, but it has such a small gap between it and 2 now.
There's no dispute that TotK won for raw speed (that 20 mil didn't even take the whole year, it was a few months), but for some reason it lacks any of the continuing momentum that carried BotW to such heights. It pretty much hopped straight to 20M and then just... stopped. Meanwhile BotW is still pushing units, even more than TotK some months seemingly.
The sales seem to imply that purchasers of TotK are almost exclusively returning BotW fans; 2/3 retention isn't horrible but it's certainly lower than I would've guessed.
I keep wondering what made the two have such drastically different curves. The price increase? Lack of DLC? Mixed fan response? Just that many people who bought BotW didn't like it?
@@aetherial87 I was curious so looked up the sales of BotW and the Switch itself in their (shared) first year. 17.8m console sales and 8.5m BotW sales. BotW had been sold to 48% of the Switch install base at that time.
It makes sense that people want to experience BotW before TotK. It would be harder to go back to BotW after playing TotK. Plus BotW is cheaper.
Botw is easy to go back to. Its one of the greatest games of all time.
Playing games in order is usually the norm.
Botw is more fun to play
@@archer5834 yup i replay BOTW all the time, i havent gone back to TOTK since my first time through it.
@@thefilmdirector1 yes, there's just something about botw that totk completely lacks. And I personally enjoy the old shrines better, think that characters like mipha and revali are more interesting than rauru and sonya, and I like the divine beasts better than the "temples". Plus I think the world looks better when it's not cluttered with random garbage and copy pasted sky islands with silver bokoblins every 5 feet
When James Cameron made Avatar 2, he said the most important thing to get right was recreating how Avatar 1 made people feel instead of just trying to go bigger with the action. I think TOTK doesn't connect with as many people because Nintendo tried to go bigger with the gameplay but neglected the Zen/back to nature atmosphere that people fell in love with in the first one.
100%
See this is why Breath is the better game in a nutshell
TotK should have been a game about rebuilding, but the world somehow felt more cold than BotW.
So true so true so real
@@katelawyer3689it’s objectively a worse game from a game design perspective
Sequelitis aside, one possible contributing factor to the "lacking" sales of ToTK is the pandemic. Post pandemic when everyone has to go back to work, games will simply sell less as people have less time to play games. BotW had the benefit of releasing with huge acclaim and winning a GotY, and when the pandemic hit and everyone had to stay home, I'm sure that of a lot of people who bought a Switch during that time period had BotW on their list of games to play.
Ultimately I think what doomed this game is something called "Earned Media". Which is essentially just marketing talk for "word of mouth" where people naturally talk positively about your product. Botw, people wouldn't stop doing letsplays of it, talking about it with their friends, singing praises of the game. When totk came out, all I heard was "I couldn't be bothered to finish it" or "I got bored after awhile".
Word of mouth sells games. And, regardless of how anyone "actually" feels about the games, this one just had worse word of mouth comparatively, which (if we are just talking raw sales numbers) didn't push the "fence sitters" who weren't sure to buy it or not to--well, the word of mouth just wasn't there to convince them to do so like there was for botw. People stopped posting youtube letsplays on it alot quicker, put the game down sooner. Outside of "wacky creation clips", it's 5 minutes of fame became more like 1 minute. That's what hurt it's sales if you ask me. And when it was confirmed no DLC. . . that's what killed it.
I dunno...a lot of people loved TOTK too and many would say it's better then BOTW really.
True...but still generally most do call it better then BOTW I noticed.
Yeah that's right, I have a friend who asked me if I recommend TotK (we both liked BotW a lot) and of course told him no for all the reasons many videos are explaining now, I'm glad he didn't waste $70 like me
@@Kooptj I dunno...maybe he should have come to his own conclusion tbh
@@Jdudec367 I’m pretty sure ‘most’ do not.
@@Jdudec367 I would've appreciated if someone had told me TotK was gonna be so bad before buying it...
It makes sense imo. If you're going to play Zelda on Switch, you play BOTW first since TOTK is an extremely direct continuation down to the world map.
Totk is not a continuation in any way to botw lol
They actively ignore the previous game if anything, but the logic makes sense
@rDuskHuntress I'm not talking about story.
Hot take but I think TOTK is a significantly better experience if you never played BOTW
@@ericwindsor339I mean, the sequel is so weirdly detached and disconnected from the first game that your take makes perfect sense. It feels more like an alternate universe story than a sequel.
@@austinwilkerson84 yeah I think TOTK is more like a higher budget remake than a sequel, which isn't really what people were asking for. If you played the first game 7 years ago then it might feel fresh playing TOTK now, but if you were a big BOTW fan and played it a lot a lot of things wear out their shine very quickly.
Its just the same stuff over and over again
I actually have a lot of friends that bought TOTK because they were seeing all sorts of weird contraptions on the internet and wanted to get the game to see what was up with all of that. Some of them even bought a switch just for Tears of the Kingdom. No the game's been out for so long, even though it's like the only game they own, they've had some time apart from it and they want that experience again, so now they're getting breath of the wild to kind of backfill and get more of the Zelda experience. They came for Ultrahand, they stayed for Zelda. It's kind of awesome.
Calling either of these games Zelda is generous
I bet your favorite game is ocarina of time
Playing botw after my first experience was totk sucked complete ass bottom
@@esiahlynch That's why I told them to start with breath of the wild, but they didn't listen. Some of them still liked it, most of them said they felt really constrained by the lack of full telekinesis and get out of jail free card with ascend
I have about 350 hours in BotW. I put in about 60 hours into TotK at launch but I haven't touched it for a while. Eventually I will probably return to TotK, probably. I still haven't beaten TotK yet. For whatever reason I couldn't get into and enjoy TotK at launch like I did with BotW. Recently I've been watching others first playthroughs of BotW. I don't know if it's just because I've started watching recent playthroughs but it seems to me that new players starting their first playthrough of BotW is a rising thing at the moment. It seems like it might be starting to trend at the moment. I could be wrong though. I am considering starting a new playthrough of BotW myself. I do miss the old Zelda formula and hope it's not abandoned completely or that they return to it for some future Mainline Zelda titles. But I also enjoy BotW and TotK. I do want to have the desire to get back into TotK. I do want to enjoy that game. And I am sure I will once I return to it and get into it. I really have no idea what the point of my comment was going to be. And I don't know where to go from here. But here is my comment anyways. (Sarcastically) You're welcome.
I work in a place where most employees are gamers, and from what I can gather many just didn't want more BotW. Like it was cool as a one off, but more "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" open world with no dungeons and a mediocre non-linear story isn't what people wanted. Like my grandma loved BotW (beat it on Master mode iirc), but I gave her my copy of TotK and even she said it was bad.
Yet Nintendo is doubling down on this. Personally, I'm hoping EoW will be better, but I was also baited by TotK supposedly having dungeons and sky islands, so I ain't trusting shit.
She beat BotW in master mode and said TotK is bad? Based grandma
@@Kooptj Whoooaa! Your grandmothers a gamer!? I wish my grandmother was that cool...
I find the combat in BOTW much more enjoyable despite the weapon durability. With the rune abilities, you can do very powerful combos that require skills , while in TOTK, half of the time you are stuck in the menu wheel and spamming arrows. The biggest differences in my opinion , in Breath of the Wild ,the world is your playground but in Tears of the Kingdom, YOU ARE the playground.
It's something I started to dislike really quick and it's the fact that the sheika slate's runes and champion abilities were designed to be quick and easy to activate and rarely stops you for more than a second, the flow of combat in totk on the other hand gets constantly interrupted when switching arrows, the zonai abilities all take too long to be immediately useful and don't inherently have combat capabilities built in and the sages' abilites are cool but activating them is horribly inconsistent
Bonus point any group of regular enemies get completely trivialized by the smoke shroom and since combat didn't feel that great in my eyes due to the aforementioned points I stockpiled those shrooms and made heavy use of them
It’s crazy to me they didn’t let you at least make your own arrows that you could quickly equip. Even if you had to do it in a shop or ahead of time. I think the menu would have been way less tedious if they at least gave us a way to make our own custom arrows in huge groups.
@@Ray-dl5mpimagine cycling through 100 arrows to find the one that you want
Oh wait, you don't have to imagine because that's basically how the game is now 😑
How many different kind of arrows are you guys using? I just sort by most used or highest strength depending on what the situation calls for, I found having to continously warp to shops to sell stuff and buy more arrows to be far more tedious than spending half a second to pop a bomb on an arrow
@@Lucarioguild7 well yeah, spending half a second to attach a bomb to an arrow EVERY TIME is a LOT more tedious than just using a bomb arrow 😂 you could even just equip bomb arrows in botw and just use several without the need of fusion.
Totk is also 5 years younger than BotW
I heard from others that BOTW was enough to get there fill, and that they did not want more of the same or similar experience.
I think it’s just the price difference-especially because it’s only a difference of 10,000 units.
Maybe but I think totk was just to much of the same thing with some head scratching choices that made no sense, like there horrible bow and arrow menu .
lol Nop. First of, 10 dollars is not that big of a difference in that bracket. But more than that, while BotW sales were always consistently high during 6 years, TotK sales started to rapidly decline almost immediately. Meaning that, if the trend keeps on going, those 10K units of difference will grow larger in the next quarter.
@@XanderVJ I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, work on your attitude.
Are people’s attention spans so bad today they’re still complaining about menus lol crazy shit man.
@@garytheprogressivelibertar560 That doesn't make sense, it had some really weird and bad menu choices but that alone wouldn't make the game sell worse obviously
In a vacuum, totk is just a more complete and refined version of botw, but I still enjoyed botw more by virtue of experiencing that world for the first time. For the next Zelda, I really want them to dwelve more into big, populated, and fleshed-out cities. It's the natural step to spice up their open world formula.
You call it more complete, I call it bloated.
Bingo. TOTK feels like too much to figure out to feel like you’re experiencing what it has to offer.
BOTW you didn’t have to do anything… and the experience was amazing.
@@ajborowski TOTK kinda feels like BOTW but they throw two more games on top of it. So people is like, fuck it, BOTW is already huge and completely, to fully enjoy Tears would drive someone mad without glitches. Then there stuff people like about BOTW that isn't in Tears like Master Mode, Champions Ballad, trail of the sword.
@@ajborowskiwhat the hell are you talking about
@@user-wb8iu1hl6iThey're right, totk is bloated with useless stuff while botw feels more intentional (even if that game is also full of nothing burgers)
No matter what the true reasons are (there is certainly more than one reason), many people will be quick to project their own feelings into the fact that TOTK sold 10k units less than BOTW this quarter
For some, they don’t like TOTK, so they’ll say it’s because of quality
It’s also possible that some people bought BOTW, were disappointed by it, and decided not to get the sequel
It’s also true that BOTW is 60 or less, and TOTK is 70 dollars, so Nintendo actually had higher paying customers for TOTK than BOTW
Some games that are vocally disliked still sell more than their successor games: New Super Mario Bros U DX is stilil higher than Mario Wonder, Super Mario Party is higher that Superstars, BDSP is higher than Legends Arceus, and even Sword & Shield are still 1 million units ahead of Scarlet & Violet.
Oh lmao, this whole video is talking about a 10k difference in sales? 😂
That's basically a rounding error
@@StinkyBuster Yes, many who talks about the topic purposefully leave out that it's only a 10k difference
Rather than parroting my TotK opinions, I'd just like to point out how unique everyone's feelings are on the game. Personally speaking, I really disliked BotW, loved TotK, watched several hours-long essays about how TotK is a bad sequel/game, agreed with them, and yet still came out enjoying TotK.
I find it amusing when people are confused why they don't like TOTK when they literally spent 100 hours in BOTW, so they're exploring the exact same land and wondering why they don't feel a sense of wonder seeing the same stuff.
The best way to play TOTK is to NEVER play BOTW because TOTK is the actual finished version of BOTW, but it's the same land so BOTW will spoil that experience of wonder for them.... as short lived as that wonder will be until they realize they're just going to be killing hundreds of bokoblins, finding 1000 korok seeds, finding 100+ shrines with breakable weapons... yeah the wonder will not last long. When I think about it... the best way to play BOTW or TOTK is not to play either one at all.
I played botw and totk for my first Zelda games back to back cause I wanted to see what the hype was about. I played botw and had times of fun with zero nostalgia, I hated how easy the combat was, the lack of story structure. After playing totk I felt like this is what botw was always supposed to be. The shrines felt so much more rewarding and vibey. Finding different bosses and fusing weapons was absolutely sick. The story was fun esp cause I did all the memories in order all at once then went to do my final missions so it felt like watching a movie. I hated how they handled the temple stories but loved those bosses and the music. Don’t even get me started on the colgera boss. And to top off learning that Zelda was the dragon this whole time was crazy
I feel like this is really more solid proof in favor of my personal sentiment, Breath Of The Wild is just kind of better. I wanted a deeper world from TOTK and instead it feels like we just got a more complicated one.
“Better” maybe just say botw is more enjoyable “better” is not the word for it
In terms of revenue though I’m sure Nintendo is pleased. With the higher price point, TOTK brought in something like $13.3m during the quarter, while BOTW only brought in around $12m.
TOTK itself also doesn’t necessarily exist to sell a ton of copies. It’s an entry point into the $70 game market for Nintendo. They knew by pricing it at $70 they would take a hit, but they calculated (correctly) that enough people would buy it that it would still perform comparatively to BOTW strictly from a revenue perspective. They likely expected a slight dip in revenue, but that was the price to pay to gauge consumer demand for a $70 game, and slowly acclimate gamers to a higher price point for their big first party titles. When the next console rolls around they’ll probably make a ton more money by pricing everything at that $70 premium, and they can thank TOTK for opening the door to that for them.
I’m a business guy so if I were running Nintendo, I would’ve done the same thing. It’s a brilliant business move tbh.
TBH I’m way more interested in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe outselling Super Mario Bros. Wonder. What’s THAT about??
NSMBUDX already sold 15 mil before Wonder came out.
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe on Game Boy Color? I mean it was the first time SMB was on the go. Of course it's gonna sell like hotcakes.
u deluxe
Wonder sucks. Glorified phone game.
@@EdwardSnortin why do I feel you use that excuse for a good number of Nintendo games?
Arlo: i ❤️ talking about Zelda
Us: You say that, but here we are, a year later, still waiting for that TotK review
IDK, he's made it very clear that he is conflicted about Tears and does not want to encourage the kind of discourse found on so many other videos. He even calls it out, asking people to stop it in this one.
TotK not beating the $70 dlc allegations
i've always been one of those people that will want to play the first one before playing the squeal when it comes to signal player series/franchise I've never played
Except that totk is not a sequel: the story of botw is totally absent in totk, nobody remembers what hapoened before, things changed without an explanation. Is more like an alternate universe
Also does the sales for BoTW include the Wii U? Allot of people forget it was released on the Wii U as well so many people might’ve bought that version and then again when they got a switch.
The Wii U version of BotW has been out of print for years now, and the eShop was closed last year, no nope.
That’s irrelevant to what this video is discussing. We’re not talking about how BOTW has sold more copies overall than TOTK (obviously it has. It’s been out for way longer.) What we’re discussing is it STILL selling more copies every month. In the present. Like in the last quarter of the year, it outsold TOTK. That’s the interesting part.
@@abdieljove2011 exactly. Wii U is irrelevant and it's honestly insane that the 7+ year old BOTW is outselling the 1 year old TOTK at this point even though on paper it's supposed to be the older worse game
cdi zelda: "GOOD!"
A couple things worth remembering:
-botw was the Switch's launch title, meaning it has a far more ubiquitous legacy than totk has.
-Botw is ten bucks cheaper, meaning for the average person nebulously buying games either casually or as a gift, it's the easier pick, especially because the two are similar looking from the outset.
-Totk reached twenty million, quite a bit faster than botw did, meaning it naturally going to have a sharper plateau.
-Totk is a sequel, meaning botw is going to sell faster, both because sequels tend not to sell as well as previous instalments, but also because most people want to play the previous entry first, and then the sequel later, if at all.
-Totk has entered the prerequisite "Zelda community backlash" period, which every Zelda game goes through, wherein tons of several hour long think pieces get made on how the game is bad actually, which leads casual players to act accordingly and avoid the game.
-We are near the end of the current Switch's life cycle, meaning there a lot more used and cheaper Switches available, so people who had been holding out are probably jumping in now, and are naturally going to pick the earlier and cheaper zelda game to try first.
In general, this news shouldn't be that surprising to anyone. It'll really be only after the two games reach their total lifetime sales that any substantive analysis on the game's lifetime goals can really be made. It also worth remembering totk is newer, had its period of hype, and now there are lots of people interested in the previous entry because its started to reach its first window of nostalgia. The sales of these two games have and will continue to ebb and flow with the culture. I'm not making any points about which game is better, I'm just saying making any definite assumptions about what this means in terms of that is foolhardy at this point.
Perfect comment
Agreed. I think another thing to point out is that Tears of the Kingdom is a much more overwhelming game than Breath of the Wild as well, both in terms of content and mechanics. The 1st game is a lot simpler than the sequel with tons of extra mechanics to deal with that just don't exist in BotW, thus making it far easier to pick up and play.
Heck, one of my sisters played the 1st game and loved it, but has yet to play through TotK, which I highly suspect has to do with how overwhelming it is. Even I as a more experienced gamer had to take a long break from the game just because of how much stuff there was to do and it was starting to burn me out for desiring to play more. I got back to the game again this summer and have started pushing for the end game, but even then there is a lot of content left.
When you begin resorting to using broken mechanics like the air scooter and other shortcuts to speed things through, you know it's overwhelming.
Both are mid but botw is the better game
Skyward Sword still isn't a very good game
I love the comment about the "Zelda community backlash period". With the possible exception of OoT, I'm pretty sure every 3D/perspective view Zelda game has had a backlash period of some kind. And with the exception of Skyward Sword, all of them eventually recovered from that backlash period and went on to become well-loved. BotW went from being "innovative and revolutionary" to "too open, directionless, and empty", but now, people are coming back around to BotW simply from comparison to TotK.
The people yearn for Revali
Daruk's protection is ready to roll 🗣️🗣️🗣️
Eh, sequels rarely sell better then the original, but also people that buy sequels alone (which Zelda's lack of continuity is a BLESSING for) want to check out previous entries.
I feel like someone said the sequels don’t sell as wlll thing and people ran with it without checking data. GTA 5 sold more than 4, fallout 4 sold more than 3, elder scrolls 5 sold more than 4. For a majority of game franchises sequels sell better, not worse
@@zealousinitiate3697It’s more so direct sequels rather than numbered sequels, since the games you mentioned have nothing to do with their predecessors. Pokémon Gold/Silver sold worse than Red/Blue/Green, Mario Galaxy 2 sold worse then Galaxy, and Majora’s Mask worse than Ocarina of Time, just as a few examples. And so it’s rare that those kinds of sequels sell better than the OG.
I don’t like the new Zelda formula but I beat BOTW and only got through the first boss of TOTK. I hope we get old Zelda back
@@aneasteregg8171The way some you old Zelda fans speak is so miserable and off putting.
@@Nastara In general old nintendo fans are miserable. Source: I'm an old pokemon fan lmao we're probably one of the more miserable groups out there bc the negative people are half right
@@aneasteregg8171 The "loyal fanbase" is the reason they changed to this current formula to begin with. Y'all complained about Zelda being "stale" with Skyward Sword. You reap what you sow.
@@aneasteregg8171 not only were your old Zelda game sales declining, the hardware those games were sold on was declining too 🤣🤣
@@Physicalchemistry15151hmm, maybe there is a correlation...
here's a thought.. maybe totk being a giant chunk of botw dlc and a poorly written story might contribute to inferior sales.. just an idea...
One thing I’d add is on top of TotK being $70, it came out during a time where inflation is affecting everything. I can see people waiting for the game to go on sale.
I like to think it's Switch newcomers buying their new consoles with that legendary game that everyone and their grandma's been talking aka BOTW. BOTW makes for a great introduction to the console, whereas TOTK being a direct sequel with different mechanics makes it weirder to start. Both are fantastic games that sold amazing and Nintendo's happy with the sells numbers regardless.
yeah. botw is pretty much babies second switch game (mk8d being the first) so it makes sense that it's still selling really well
most people who wanted tears of the kingdom already bought it so 90+% of the new sales are gonna be newcomers and they just aren't gonna buy the more complicated and elaborate sequel when they can buy the cheaper and more straightforward original that has established itself as THEE must have switch game for the last 7 years
Not really - I didn't think of Botw for merely more than a second with Tears. TOTK is totally its own self-contained, Complete entity. Verticality, exciting Fusion mechanics that's at the worst level, is simply addictive binging fun. And at is most refined, are those absolute Masterpieces and works of Art that are the ''Skill kill'' videos using all manner of Recall & Ultrahand etc like it's witchcraft. Bunning all that Pro stuff, you can just casual the game like me [spoilers] get the Master Sword early etc.
I actually purchased BOTW after first playing TOTK because TOTK made me interested in the full story. In my opinion, Nintendo did a great job making two games that can be played in either order, with me viewing BOTW more like I would a prequel story.
I honestly feel like I wasted 70 bucks, because I just couldn't finish TOTK, it felt like I was doing work, a chore. I thought maybe I wasn't playing it right, but I kept getting dissapointed. Like "Oh here's another cave, I'm only exploring so I can get ANOTHER BUBBUL GEM. I eventually just avoided shrines. MORE KOROKS?! man....
so relatable
This makes plenty of sense since due to TotK being a direct follow-up to BotW, most people who haven’t played BotW would rather do so first rather than immediately jumping into TotK. Which’s probably the best course of action, as it’d probably be hard to go back to BotW due to all the additions and improvements TotK adds. Along with BotW being a lot cheaper to get nowadays due to regularly going on sale, which TotK hasn’t really done yet due to still being fairly new. But hey, the sales of one game bumping up another’s in a kind of symbiotic way is nothing but a net positive for Nintendo, since a sale is a sale at the end of the day.
That's good breath of the Wild is a far better game, Tears of the Kingdom was fun but we'd just had that style of Zelda and gimmicking it up to the max felt a bit of a cashgrab
I just bought botw for the first time, I didn’t realise totk was the same map, if I knew that I’d of just bought that one, I assumed totk was like a proper sequel
Spicy take salad time; I didn't enjoy TotK, but did enjoy BotW, and myself and others are going to suggest BotW to new people asking for suggestions. THAT SAID, TotK is slightly more expensive and there's likely people out there that mistakenly believe they need to play BotW to "understand" TotK like more "traditional" sequels and intend to play both eventually.
TotK has become a divisive game now that the hype has gone away and people can have a discussion about not liking it without getting attacked by fans of it.
Didn’t like it much either. To me, it’s worse than BotW in almost every way, which is not helped by being $10 more and being such a direct sequel.
To me, it’s completely natural that BotW would sell more. It’s the better game by far to me. I’d refund the game if I could, whereas I don’t regret buying BotW on both WiiU and Switch in the slightest
@@DerrickWilson-fm7vcisn't it just going through the usual backlash cycle for new zeldy games didn't this happen with botw too, or so I hear
@@dragonicbladex7574it's different with this one because of how direct a sequel it tries to be yet fails at doing so with things like the story
@@dragonicbladex7574 people saying its the Zelda cycle are just using that as a defence.
TOTK has some very real problems detracting from it that many are more than willing to ignore because it’s Zelda
@@dragonicbladex7574 it didn’t happen with BotW. The last game it happened with was Skyward Sword, a game that many Zelda fans were convinced was just going through the hate cycle, but is still a game I don’t like at all. Maybe don’t invalidate others for not liking the game by saying it’s just a cycle?
Arlo I’ve watched you for years every single video. Never commented before.
🎉BRING BACK ARLOCAST🎉
I do feel the need to add that BOTW also had some sales in the last little bit, I saw it going for 40$. That definitely could explain some difference too since totk wasn’t on sale
TotK did not sell as well because its just BOTW 2.0. It needed its own identity and it instead relies on the fact that BotW was a thing. Its disappointing in that sense.
It's so interesting to see how hard TOTK plateued. It feels like the game sold 20 million copies almost instantly and then hasn't sold another copy since lol.
If you're interested in the breakdown as to why a lot of people prefer BOTW over TOTK (and why some people actually DISLIKE TOTK), Skitty Bitty did an excellent 3.5 hour (yes really) video on it
SKITTY MENTIONEDDD i have a whole playlist of bad reviews
I'm so glad people are hating on totk. I thought I was crazy. The game is evil
@@ThatDiabeticChemist it's super normal. People is buying BOtW First to play TOTk.
I LOVE SKITTY
It’s like how some people dislike eating vegetables and prefer eating chocolate.
mandatory reminder that the sales numbers we have are ONLY physical retail sales, not eshop sales. And Piracy isn't as widespread today as it was on Switch's launch, sure there were methods from very early on with RCM, but very few people were doing it, nowadays if you buy a second-hand switch odds are it's modded already, so piracy now is much more commonplace than it was early on
This makes sense as BOTW had an identity. TOTK was borrowing theirs.
😂 they’re from the same series what identity do they need
Release TotK on Wii U, make up those 10,000 copies
It's an interesting dichotomy between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Both were really fun imo, but definitely had glaring flaws. I think the reason why Breath of the Wild has sold more is because it's more approachable from a beginner's perspective; Tears of the Kingdom does grant the player more freedom, but that freedom could be somewhat overwhelming for a brand new player. Additionally, I think the sheer size of Tears is intimidating as well, as I got the vibe it suffered from the "too much game" curse DK64 is often criticized for.
Anecdotally, my sister got a switch recently. And when my brother, her roommates, and I (all Switch veterans)were discussing what games she should get with the voucher, we all kind of agreed that BOTW is important to experience first.
Especially if you’re in the camp that TOTK is the superior experience, I think that makes it all the more worthwhile to play BOTW first.
A wise creator once said, “you can’t top pigs with pigs”. TOTK is just not as good as BOTW
What if the 2nd batch of pigs is better or whatever though?
One thing i find interesting, in germany, when it came out BotW was 70€ and TotK was 60€.
There’s 4 reasons I can think of for TotK sales slowing down like it did.
1. Switch is in it’s final year
2. Same map as BotW
3. Some Zelda fans dislike the current direction
4. 70 dollar price tag
I didn’t buy totk but I will get echos.
not enough changes for hyrule, not enough sky islands (big ones like in the beginning), the below really empty
i dropped soon after i discovered the void underground, most disapointing thing ever for me, just 20 hours played
100 hours of botw
And because its not nearly as good
@@alibabaschultz352 It's better actually
The "same map" critique is a bit of a funny take imo
This Format as a Podcast on Spotify would be much appreciated ❤.
I'll probably get crucified for this, but BotW is simply a much better game. Better puzzle design, better abilities, better atmosphere, and arguably a better story.
Disagree on first two points
Agree on the others though the story of both games are a bit underwhelming compared to other Zelda games
I got TotK a while ago and got a little way into it. It seems so much heavier on the busy work than BotW that I lost any interest in playing it. I spend enough time at work already.
BotW and TotK despite being set in the same world, feel very different and while I prefer TotK, I can absolutely understand why people would prefer BotW.
The thing is, preference only really comes into play for the people who have bought both. When we're talking sales, we've gotta ask why some of these people aren't even interested in playing TotK to see what they prefer. IMO, while the factors of BotW being first and having the longer reputation as a must-own Switch game are true, I wonder if part of it has to do with the experience of BotW. Even though it's not as big as TotK, it's still a big game that you can spend a long time playing. I think it's very possible that there are more casual fans who feel like "I enjoyed that, but I've had my fill for now and I want to play something more different than its sequel."
I think “Breath of the Wild” as a name holds a lot of weight on it’s own. It was a huge talking point for many years. Almost like how “Skyrim” is basically a more iconic name than the series it is a part of
I have a hot take. The best parts of tears of the kingdom were the starting island and the rainy thunder island thing you had to explore in order to get to minerus mask. Why ? Those were the only parts of tears of the kingdom that had a fresh and new identity. It felt new and exciting and I really hoped for more of those large sized sky islands. Traversing them made me feel like Nintendo figured out a perfect mix between new and old Zelda.... But yea no. Once you land back in Hyrule it's just recycelt breath of the wild with a ton of gimmicks
Likely those who did not get BOTW previously, have noticed it now courtesy of TOTK. Decited to purchase both, or want to play BOTW first, before getting TOTK.
-There is a lot of new Switch owners so it kind of makes sense. This might ably many players who had Switch years ago as well. Just think about it. Seven years old kids then, are now teens.
Bizarre seeing all the people saying they didn’t like ToTK because it was the same as BotW after the long wait and then all the people who are saying BotW is a far superior game even when comparing them now side by side. I know they’re different groups of people but how can two people look at the same thing and have diametrically opposite opinions?
BotW/TotK are complicated games with design that's hard to analyse.
I personally think that the "TotK is the same as BotW" criticism is similarly misguided as the "BotW is just an Ubisoft game" criticism, it's surface level. There are things from BotW that didn't change that really should've, but there are also lots of things that did change, sometimes for the worse.
$70 and not even a shrine on shrine island smh
totk isn't the better game by a longshot. more stuff isn't better stuff arlo.
Breath of the wild was one of the few big Nintendo games you can buy at launch.
Tears of the Kingdom comes at a time where people have a vast library games available to choose from.
Makes total sense to me
This doesn't surprise me. Honestly.
TOTK didn't impress me nearly as much as BOTW And it's not even just that it's a sequel the presentation was.... Choppy?
The biggest selling point were the sandbox mechanics and save for a small subset of players that's not why people play LoZ games.
It wasn't marketed very well and pretty much relied on sequel hype to move sales. Which, save for a vocal minority, wasn't going to hold sales momentum nearly as much as Nintendo hoped it would.
Ultimately the general vibe of the reviews was that it was a great game but not nearly as much of a stand out success in the way it's predecessor was. So people took that to mean you might as well just play BOTW, (which had a lot more post-launch interest behind it.) unless you're a diehard fan.
Plust TOTK boosted BOTW sales for people who hadn't played the first game yet.
The thing is totk is a sequel. The people who wanna play botw/totk will start with botw. Some won't like botw, meaning fewer people will play totk. Of course, there are those who will play totk first but that percentage is really tiny.
Upon totk release, almost all the players that loved botw rushed to get totk..those that didn't didnt get totk. The majority of rest who hadn't play botw but was interested in totk decided to play botw first.
Makes sense since it's better of if someone plays Breath of the Wild first before they get into Tears of the Kingdom.
People bought into the ToTK hype and purchased a Switch to experience it. A year later, they're looking for more Zelda games the Switch offers, resulting in a BoTW bump.
Love Jon. Also miss arlocast..
People want to play 1 before 2
I played the hell out of BOTW. I explored EVERYWHERE. Then TOTK came out... with mostly the same world. I just couldn't make myself do it again. Oh, but there's the underground! And it SUCKS! It's horrible and I hate it! The sky areas are kinda neat sure but... I was just done at that point. I wanted something new, not a glorified expansion. I tried but I've yet to do even one dungeon in TOTK.
Breath of the Wild was hyped up alongside the release of an exciting and fresh idea for a new Nintendo console and was a bit of a major breakthrough for the series that had people, myself included, who never played a Zelda game before buying it. It was THE game to get for early adopters and word of mouth had this game considered the greatest of all time for years. I am not surprised that it’s sold more and continues to sell really well despite TOTK coming out.
Exactly. One is a masterpiece, the other is a cheap imitation
Crazy to me all of the sentiment that people love BOTW so much more than TOTK for its story and atmosphere.
I’ve never been able to finish BOTW due to the open-ended nature of the questlines, whereas I’ve fully completed TOTK and vastly preferred it overall.
I find it neat there’s such staunchly different viewpoints on it.
Just give us that Totk review already, Arlo, please!!
Arlo it's kinda not fair to say "We don't need to argue which is the better game" and then explain one of the ways you believe TOTK is implicitly better. And I understand you're merely posturing that consumers, given the choice of one experience, or bigger version of that same experience, that you would think the value proposition is in the sequel. However consumers, even casuals, have more consideration than just amount of content, and for that reason I'm going to ignore your plea to not hear another criticism of TOTK and explain with as much brevity as I can muster, which I often can't muster, the subjectivity of that you ignore when you generalize experiences like that.
-It's often quality over quantity
-Options are the key of this new Zelda design
-Options for the player should mean that TOTK's quantity is giving both
-But, Options don't always equal quality
-The options are numerous and daunting to some players
-Thankfully problems allow a lot of solutions
-Unfortunately a lot of these problems are overall easy, and allow for easy solutions that ignore mechanics
-Said easy solutions are often one size fits all
-The games interface is so slow and clumsy that creating good solutions is often harder than brute forcing or bypassing
-the game could be considered from some perspectives to be like that shape puzzle where every shape fits in the square hole
-This is also ignoring subjective debates on how fun and varied the Sky Islands and the Depths actually are, how the story may or may not be worse, if the visual story telling of the environment is as good as BOTW, etc.
-There are a lot of short comings of BOTW but perhaps we can describe them as growing pains. There are a lot of valid reasons to think TOTK is either inferior OR fails to be a satisfying sequel and as tired as the argument seems right now, it's always beneficial to talk about.
-Like why the sequel to a game with such a strong supporting cast and back story deci-Secret Stone, Secret Stone, Demon King, Demon King, Secret Stone, Demon King, Secret Stone...
"-It's often quality over quantity" both games are obviously quantity over quality considering all you find in either games is breakable weapons, korok seeds and shrines. In the sequel they bother to make actual different bosses this time and a more acceptable enemy variety, but they reuse the same land - yeah, use the Same land in a game where the main draw is exploration. Genius move nintendo.
Having a dull sky and underground map does not make up for it, there's nothing to find there (nothing WORTH finding.) They spent years on making this "sequel" and only bothered to make ONE new town.
BOTW = Unfinished bland sandbox demo. Not worth it.
TOTK = the finished version with a bit of extra stuff, also not worth it, especially for those that have played BOTW for a long time. I think people should just say "stuff" instead of "content" at this point, I Hate that word now and interestingly it's when games started getting really dull that the word started spreading in popularity...
I have a few pointers on why some of these things might be the case (at least for me): on a basic level, there is nothing wrong with the game. The problems are that whatever you did or gathered in the first game gets fully reset, yet its the same world but with different abillities. Wich is one of the issues acctually. Some points on the map you can easilly see the areas the devs wanted you to use the old abilities with. Before you could cross streams and rivers easilly with the cryo ability. Now im struggling to even cross one at all if i dont have heaps of stamina or random wooden stuffs nearby to make a bridge with. Then there is the fact that suddenly ALL of the guardians and sheika stuff just... straight up vanished. Almost as if it never happened at all? For me thats a huge blow and i was verry dissapointed. They didnt expand on the games lore. They just... have overwriten what was allready established and destroyed a lot of the world building along with it. Like on one of the locations in botw/totk there is this big wall with heaps of guardians near it. In totk. All of them are gone and in its place is a completely OUT of place bokoblin camp with lots of enemies.... why? This used to be a pretty major highway in the game its lore. Now its suddenly blocked of... i thought we would see efforts in trying to rebuild hyrule. And thats not to mention how they did the great plateau dirty. Where is the shrine of resurection? Anyway. That and to me the fuse abillity seems like a good idea butnin practice im scrolling for 15 minutes to try and find an item to attach to my arrow. Its clunky, annoying and it kills all momentum in a fight when i need to read through an entire diary just to fight that one item. I put 10 hours into the game after 1 year of ownership. It was always a risk when they wanted to reuse botw its map. And... the changes are not good imo. Its like a friend that you kind of remember but he has changed so much you dont know if he is the same guy or not. You cant connect with the story and map beceause it all feels so out of place. Its the same world but also not? It doesnt really work imo...
I do find I weird how I always wanted to play BOTW but as soon as I was burned out with TOTK over a year ago I’ve just not had any interest since then
good the better and not lazy game deserves to sell more
Hottest take EVER:
This is because BOTW is a better game. More doesn't always mean greater.
Any new person willing to start playing a Zelda game would likely be buying the first one to play them in order. And many parents buying for the kids would choose the $10 cheaper game if the gameplay similar
the price could actually be a good reason, you may be onto something there
i would say. between the 2 breath is also the better told story. tears has its moments but story wise its drops the ball a lot.
the building gimick may not be enough to bring more sales and the more mix reception on reviews would also affect sell of the game. not to mention with the switch 2 around the corner that would also slow down sales
I'm not surprised, honestly. I bought and played the hell out of and beat BOTW, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. But TOTK came and I bought it and... I haven't touched it. I didn't even start it up yet. I think I gorged myself on the feast, the absolute banquet, that was BOTW so much, that I just needed to have a break from Zelda. Knowing how... many... hoouuurrrssss... I put into BOTW, and that TOTK is even bigger and longer and everything, it goes from feeling like a brand new adventure to, like, almost like a chore. It's too big, too soon. It would've been more palatable, I think, if TOTK debuted with the Switch 2. That would've been far enough apart. The hunger would have had time to build.
No DLC is still a huge pain point for players and potential buyers. I don't know how a company sells 20 million copies and never even bothered to plan at least 1 expansion.
TOTK is much less beginner friendly control wise, my dad became very frustrated trying to use ultra hand and dpad fuse mechanics, whereas BOTW was much simpler mechanics to use.
I'd go as far to say that the controls and UI are actually outright bad and severely hamper enjoyment of the game. It's very clunky and filled with insane design decisions that I can't believe passed playtesting.
Update: as of november 23 TOTK is on sale, while BOTW is still full price.
TOTKs's story made me cringe.
Ganondorf looked like such a dumbass. Even in his final form, that dragon had such a braindead goofy look. As much as I hate BOTW I at least think the whole "mutated messed up" ganon was an original version, and the pink flaming boar was far more majestic looking than the mentally handicapped looking dragon we get in totk.