Completely forgot to mention that Tears of the Kingdom was finished. I have a lot of mixed feelings toward this game. Let me start off by saying in terms of plot, I think it's superior to Breath of the Wild by far. Ganon actually makes an appearance as a living being you can have emotions about, rather than some sort of nameless force of calamitous nature. The tie between past and future is great, as well as finding out Zelda's actions and her ultimate plan.

The issue is the game is it's a sequel to Breath of the Wild and it constrains what Tears of the Kingdom was trying to do. Let's start off with these floating islands. Where the hell were they in the first game? They sure as hell didn't rise up at the beginning of the game like Hyrule Castle because there are no other giant holes in the ground. No one thinks this is weird? That there are suddenly islands? I also love how no one even really knew about the existence of the Zonai, but suddenly in Tears of the Kingdom everyone and their mother have a PhD in the topic.

The depths is a big discrepency. Although admittedly pretty cool to explore and kinda creepy the first time around down there, there's literally no point to it. Sure, yeah, 1.5 dungeons are down there and you can get extra equipment, all of that could've easily been written out. Like... even within the plot it doesn't make sense. So the Zonai were flying above in the sky until one day Rauru decided to come down and bang some Hylian priestess. Sure. But before that apparently they were mining in the depths to maintain their society and technology up above? They just... had a major industry and were collecting all these materials and someone no one on the surface noticed these massive amounts of minerals floating back up to the islands above? Honestly I think Nintendo designed the depths to create more content so players didn't realize they were redoing the Breath of the Wild map all over again.

Dungeons were still not of the same level of previous generations, but they were a definite improvement from Breath of the Wild. Probably the closest we got to a traditional Zelda dungeon was the Lightning Temple. I still stand by my stance way back in A Link Between Worlds on lack of linear direction: If you can go to any dungeon at any point, there's no sort of difficulty curve for any of them. Compare say the Deku Tree to the Shadow Temple way back in Ocarina of Time. I actually can beat the Deku Tree without taking any damage, that's how easy it is. But then compared to the confusing nature of the Shadow Temple, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I see how far I've come. Jumping around with Sidon in the sky didn't feel any different than using mine carts in the volcano with Yunobo.

One thing that boggles my mind is they replaced Teba with Tulin. Why? He was probably my favorite dude from Breath of the Wild. Everyone else was the same. Did Nintendo feel with Riju more grown up, little kids don't have representation?

Personally I didn't like the building aspect of the game. The first couple of hours I think I screamed a lot from frustration when some mechanation I spent ten minutes working on fell apart because I accidentally grabbed the wrong thing. Although I became skilled with it toward the end, it's not my cup of tea, although I can see other people really enjoying it.

Final boss fight was a major upgrade from Breath of the Wild. The fact we had to trade counter attacks, a nod to previous Ganon fights where you had to hit his move back to him, was a really nice touch. Props to Nintendo for that.

After all this, I still prefer Breath of the Wild. Maybe it's because by the time Tears of the Kingdom had come around, I was tired of walking all over this map. If Nintendo had developed Tears of the Kingdom on its own, it could've been very superior. Now I'm hoping they'll get rid of this open world shit and return to the Zelda I know and love, but given how popular Breath of the Wild was, I doubt it.