#story went from an amazing prologue to the rest of the game being mostly insufferable (aside from the rito and gerudo sections) to being

[timegears-moved]

(totk ending spoilers ahoy)

wow ganondorf sure does love gettjng stabbed in the head huh

ya know, for all the shit i've given this game about how much i hate the story, that finale was fucking amazing. better than botw's even (i know it's not a hot take to say botw had a mediocre ending for how much i enjoyed the rest of the story).

so.... i loved the callbacks to the beginning with gloom's lair and the forgotten foundations. i loved that you can remove the rocks blocking the way to see the rest of the mural now that you know what happens (kinda strange that the murals were there before zelda even time travelled but whatever. i just gotta accept that the time travel in this game makes zero fucking sense). but it was just very cool to have a book closing situation with it. AND ALSO ZELDA'S TORCH WAS STILL THERE!!! very sweet and sentimental detail. i also liked how it was the opposite of botw's, as in botw you were ascending hyrule castle but here you're descending far far below the castle and further below anywhere else in the depths.

the atmosphere here was amazing, especially with how the power of the sages couldn't reach you. it was truly isolating and i knew that the sages themselves would show up eventually but nonetheless it was really hammering in the tenseness of the situation.

one of my gripes is honestly with the sages. they felt kinda....useless?? which feels means to say because i like their characters but it felt like they didn't have much of a presense in the final despite literally being there. i do like how tulin was like "we need to work together" when his whole thing during the rito questline was how he was doing everything by himself and had to learn and accept teamwork. if totk carried at least one thing over from botw it was that the rito continue to have the best and well-developed characters lmao (even if the impact of tulin's felt smaller. probably because he's not.... ya know....dead).

AS FOR THE FINAL BATTLE ITSELF. WOW. ganondorf's ai was fucking incredible here. also his taunting was just very funny to me for some reason??? except for when he reached his second phase and was beckoning link closer i was like okay you need to die now.

SPEAKING OF THE SECOND PHASE: LOST MY SHIT AT THE HEALTH BAR. i love when games play with the hud and that adds to the story (prof sada/turo's text boxes glitching out and it briefly flashing with "they have no intention of fighting anymore" before changing back comes to mind as something similar). it was just very cool.

third phase was also very cool with it incorporating the sky and zelda joining us (nitpick time sorry: though the fact that she is capable of recognizing link and helping him even as a dragon kinds goes against the whole "losing yourself" aspect of it. like she was clearly still in there). i don't think the third phase was as good as the first and especially the second though. it was very easy, though it was cool that if you got hit by ganondorf's attack you would permanently lose one of your hearts. it was still a good part of the fight though, don't get me wrong.

JUMPING AFTER ZELDA AND REACHING FOR HER WAS BEAUTIFUL THOUGH. WAHHHHH

as for the epilogue it was sweet but the entire story of the game let it down a bit. i felt nothing for mineru passing and that's because everybody from the past barely felt like a character to me. this is also extends to when the current sages were vowing to protect hyrule and zelda had a flashback to the old sages. like wow it's very cool that you got to know those guys zelda and i'm glad that they meant something to you. wish i could say the same considering we still know fuck all about them.

epilogue aside, the ending was wonderful. it brought this game up from a 6 out of 10 to a 7 out of 10. if only the rest of the story was of this quality.

#bwark #totk lb #story went from an amazing prologue to the rest of the game being mostly insufferable (aside from the rito and gerudo sections) to being #amazing again in the finale #now it's time to get working on writing my thoughts on the game as a whole #mostly done with that btw