Tears of the Kingdom: There are some downsides to this epic game

I have mostly been completely singing the praises of this really long and expansive world in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom because it is a pretty fantastic game. This doesn't meant that it is objectively the best though and to many players certain aspects of it aren't going to appeal to them entirely. I am a fickle gamer and will always find fault in any game. I wouldn't say that any game is perfect and there are always going to be things that don't appeal to certain types of gamers out there. While TotK is an absolutely epic game, there are some aspects of it that won't appeal to everyone and it is actually starting to annoy me a bit to the point where for the first time ever, I contemplated stopping playing yesterday. Not just for the day, but for good.

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I know how butthurt people can be about criticism of games so let me start this out by saying that this is still a wonderful game and I like it. Hell, it was the reason why I purchased a Switch and I regret nothing. No game is completely above criticism though and these are simply my opinions. I am an older gamer who is a filthy casual as well, so there's that.

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At times the game seems too large

A big game is a good game right? Well that is the case most of the time but there have been instances in the past, such as what I experienced with Witcher 3, where I felt as though the playable world was a bit too large. In W3 though, there were always enemy encounters around every corner. In TotK most of the explorable world is filled with absolutely nothing. I like that the world is big for sure, but there are times when I am wandering in a certain direction where I spend half an hour just attempting to arrive at a distant location with nothing really happening. I know there are ways to circumvent this but they aren't really pointed out to you. This massive open space encourages exploration for sure, but for others it encourages them to look up things online and to me, that isn't really a game anymore. I admit that I am at the point now where I look things up online pretty quickly unless it is inside a temple because the world is so damn huge that looking for certain things could truly be a needle in a haystack sort of situation and that stops being fun to me after a while.

Most combat situations are pointless

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I was quite thankful that between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom that the creators realized that making weapons scarce was a point of endless frustration with their gamers. The weapons in both games break quite rapidly and what this results in for many people is for them to avoid combat altogether, which perhaps is a more realistic representation of what an actual Hyrulian warrior would do rather than just taking on everything they see. When you are walking around in the open world though, there is very little incentive for you to ever engage in combat unless it is a specific objective. I recall raiding a fort in a sort of "what the hell? why not?" sort of moment and took on 4 enemies at once. I took a few hits and my health dropped a lot, I also used some of my items such as bombs to speed things up. After all the goons were dead and gone I looked at the loot and it was all trash. There was also nothing else opened up for me such as some forward path that I couldn't have accessed before. My main weapon had deteriorated a bit and I had to use a food item to regain health.... all for basically nothing. Since there is no XP many, I would say most, of the combat encounters are just pointless and therefore many players find themselves simply running away from any combat encounter that they get themselves into.

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Arrow scarcity is dumb

I don't like that you ever run out of arrows and would prefer that by having the bow you just have unlimited arrows the way that it is in many other games. Is it more realistic that you can and will run out of arrows? Absolutely. But if we are going for pure realism it is completely absurd that a guy the size of an 8th grader is carrying around 10 swords, half a dozen or more sets of armor, 20 meals, and a thousand animal and plant parts in his pockets. We clearly are NOT trying to have something realistic going on here so why bother with making arrows limited in the first place?

The scarcity of arrows has resulted in dozens of "farming guides" popping up all over the internet. Farming, just in a general sense, is a major reason why I stopped playing MMO's and I am not interested in having it invade my single-player world.

Like most players I find myself rationing my arrows or simply kiting (avoiding) any enemy I am in an encounter with to allow my summoned friends to hurt whatever I am facing. They never run out of arrows.

So many side-quests that you lose focus

I have gotten side-tracked so many times in this game and at the end of whatever side-mission I was involved in, the reward at the end of it isn't terribly rewarding. This of course is entirely up to the player whether or not they are going to do any of the side quests, but there was a point that I had so many quests logged up that I kind of forgot what my major objective was. Again, this is entirely my choosing and the side things were put in there so that people would have a lot of choice as to what they are going to do.

I'm not bitching, I still like the game. After around 80 hours of playing it though, I am kind of ready for it to wrap it up and be over with and since things are not terribly evident what the actual hell you are supposed to be doing, I am resorting to online guides to make this happen for me. To me, it is kind of like cheating but I would rather do a bit of cheating and enjoy the experience than simply wander around for an hour on my horse or flying across the sky to nowhere in particular.

The game is still very worth playing and I would say that it is one of the ONLY games on the Switch that is actually worth the $60 they charge for it. Just know what you are getting yourself into as this game is very open-ended as to how you are going to play it. Just don't use all your arrows :P