How much did towns improve in Tears of the Kingdom?

I recently made a video looking through the town designs in Pokemon scarlet and violet and while working on that video I couldn't help but notice how a lot of open World Games seemed to be inspired by Legend of Zelda breath of the wild after all the game received a lot of Praise from the community and even though it wasn't the first open world game it has become somewhat of a gold standard in the industry however one of the main criticisms the game got was regarding its execution of story which was all about how Calamity Ganon and his goons had messed up the world a lot of the story points were centered around the game's towns and even then the plot points felt pretty weak but now the tears of the kingdom is out I'm curious to see how the gold standard sequel improved in this specific aspect to do so I will review all 11 major settlements in the game along with their relevant quests and contributions to the game's overall story also spoiler warning now let's begin with the least town-like place you get to visit in the game look out Landing I realize this place is more of a fort than a town however it functions more like other towns than just another stable so just squint your judgy little eyes and check it this is where you get to meet Pura who gives you the quest to keep you going for the rest of the game it functions as a nice Hub since it's literally in the center of the map and you can just head in any direction it provides you with all of your adventuring Necessities there's a shop a statue a free bed a cooking pot and a stable but you don't get that last one unlocked until later in the game also whenever you complete any of the four main Town quests you get citizens from that town and look out Landing my favorite one is this Gerudo guard named Cora not because I know someone with that name or anything as you progress through the game you get a side quest that leads you to the bargain statue which will let you convert your hearts to stamina and vice versa for a small fee that is it also happens to be right next to the tunnel that leads right into Hyrule Castle after all this Hub area under the fountain was supposed to be a safe house for the royal family except instead of them running out you can now use this passage to run in the main activity that brings you back to this area other than the story quests or porra you simps is this guy who has you go on Monster hunting quests once you complete all of the quests you can talk to him again to see how many more monsters of that class are left for you to defeat and once you have defeated all of them you can get a little medal it's one of those optional completionist activities that the game lets you do the only real downside being that there's too many of some of these monsters kinda wish this guy would also say hey I got reports of X monster in this area so you don't have to use online maps to figure out which of the 80 plus taluses you haven't beaten up yet overall I think Lookout Landing is an excellent HubSpot with great lore that develops well as you progress through the story and has a good post game activity for those who want more the only real downside is how long it takes to get the stable Quest since by that point you'll end up teleporting to a nearby stable instead of here when you're coming to the area I Gotta Give it an a rank retail Village even though tears of the kingdom is an open world game it can be done in any order the game definitely encourages players to go towards Rito Village first it kind of makes sense since the tutorial section introduces you to code areas and how to deal with them and all also because you can trigger the reporter questline from the stable nearby either way it's the first of the four major towns affected by ganon's Awakening and in this game you really get to see it the whole area is covered in snow the main Bridge towards town is completely destroyed once you make your way in you realize that the town is basically empty except for a couple kids most of the adults have left town to look for food and resources in order to survive this never-ending snowstorm so these little bird kiddos are left to look after the town they run the inn and the shops and why is the snow quote set so expensive you go after toolin and follow the bonfires which the Rito are using is guides in the storm they might waste a lot of wood but at least no one's getting lost after helping Tulin defeats the monsters you team up with him and make your way towards the giant ship in the sky to stop the storm once the Sun finally Shines on Rito the snow melts away and Life Starts to return to normal even impo visits the village while searching for the geoglyphs once the adults are back you get a bunch of extra quests to help you find some shrines fix up the bridge to town and practice your flying skills over at the range there's also a free bow and some arrows you can pick up there as well as a couple free arrows in town and some more arrows in exchange for cave materials from this bird lady basically if you need arrows fast and cheap go to Rito overall it didn't feel like there was much to do here after completing the story but it was nice to see such a drastic and meaningful change after completing the main quest and having arrows is nice so Rito gets a b continuing along the story towns I went to zoro's domain next to check in on my bestie side on but long before getting to the town itself it was pretty apparent that there was this weird muddy goop everywhere and these fish people they can't breathe mud I guess this is the Zora equivalent of high pollen count after clearing up the source of the mud Zora's domain returns to normal when sidon becomes the king from there we get a couple of side quests that lead us to the other two pieces of Zora armor for link we help a guy find his wife carry over a stone to fix up mifa court and take a picture of the mifa Statue at night apart from these couple of quests there isn't much else to do in Zora's domain the fish folk talk about how they they want to become better Warriors that way they can take down these monster fortresses by themselves and the shopkeeper seems to have this weird thing for crabs you can trade him some iron shell crabs to get a gem but then he will eat the crabs raw in their shells no lamb sauce even the other Zora nearby are concerned not gonna lie Gamers the fish town was kind of a letdown hate to do this to my best decide on but I gotta give this one a c hopefully they're okay with the salt water Goron City if you thought the pollution was bad all the gorons are basically high on drugs uh sorry marbled Rock roast no one wants to work they just eat hot rock and lie thankfully the old gorons and kiddos are still okay since their teeth aren't strong enough to eat the rock roast anywho yunobo is now running a major mining operation that's made the town quite wealthy you can buy gems and most importantly you can buy diamonds these are pretty rare to find and you won't need them to upgrade some of your armor as well as get the Champion's weapons which are available in each of the four story towns once you complete the main quest you can also make quick cash by selling some of your rare oars and bulk to this Gerudo lady and there's a reporter in town who give you helpful hints to places you might want to check out once you've helped unovo stop the production of marbled Rock roast the town returns to normal and surprise surprise you get a bunch of side quests most of which revolve around finding hot springs in the ancient city of garandia instead you find minecartland where you get to play a minigame write a minecart and shoot the targets what is this righteous rails from Splatoon near Goron city you'll find the Bedrock Bistro where you can trade normal Rock roast for a seared Gourmet steak which sadly only sells for 35 rupees not worth the trip if you ask me there's also this guy who will eat a bunch of your flint and give you 1 000 rupees for every ripe Flint he ends up eating this is definitely worth the try since Flint doesn't sell for much anyways the last cool part about Goron city is that there's an easy place to cook multiple things at once you can't make any actual recipes where you can throw a bunch of meat fish or whatever else you want on this stove in the city center it'll get nicely cooked for you just make sure you got enough space in your bag for these cooked items otherwise they will burn away since you do get access to rare gems and a couple ways to earn extra rupees I'll give the gorons a b caracara Bazaar since though aren't allowed to go in Gerudo town the ones brave enough to face the desert can find some refuge in this small settlement this is another one of those not quite a town town but functions like one areas similar to Lookout Landing you got a lot of Gerudo Warriors stationed here to protect the bazaar as well as the crew of Highland treasure Hunters who found this cool looking orb thing which you will need for a quest later this is also the only non-stable area where you can run into your favorite bug steam salesman although it also has a bunch of regular shops as well the most useful shop is this one that sells you the desert though headgear which will give you enough heat resistance to explore the desert during the day and uh that's about it not much to do or see here the Gerudo town for a town that doesn't allow vo it sure is pretty empty when you walk in out of all the damaged towns I found this one to be the most interesting is all of the Gerudo have found shelter underneath the palace and since their leader riju knows link you are allowed in as well no more cross-dressing required although it is a shame that the outfit is completely removed from the game in the underground you have a nice little rest area for the kiddos a night school for the Via to get ready for the dating World an archaeologist trying to learn about some glyphs and of course a jail you can also jump down the water holes and explore more of the tunnels beneath the city which you will need to do to access the hidden clothing shop and this town has my favorite Story related challenge where you basically play a tower defense-like mode to protect the town from the invading gibdo once the town is saved you get access to the Inn which comes with a half off Spot Treatment offered by a staff in training but she's kind of bad at it so most of the time you don't get any of the benefits from the spa treatment there's also a jewelry shop for these rare mineral items you can wear I never ended up wearing any of them but I bought them anyways and you can also rent out some sand seals to explore the deserts with ease there is a pretty long questline where you help this archaeologist uncover the secret history of the Gerudo taking pictures of all the murals and collecting all the gerudu balls if you're stuck on finding their locations you can feed a splash fruit to Patricia who used her clear voyance to tell you the exact coordinates of a ball that you're missing she could give you even more coordinates after the quest but I can't be bothered to go to this random spot in a cave somewhere if you know where it leads do let me know in the comments below once the quest is complete the archaeologist agrees to put your name in a research paper wow this is just like real life me if you run around beneath the town you'll find these floating bottles calling for someone's one true love which I guess is me this lady gets so excited that she'll make you a daily meal although that daily meal is usually just dubious food maybe she should take some lessons from the Hylian Chef nearby who's here to share some of her recipes chances are she's the one that made all the posters you see throughout the game a real MVP if you ask me this guy is also an MVP of sorts for being able to sneak into the brutal Town undetected also another fun fact is that if you dress up as a yiga clan member the guards will arrest you and throw you in jail but if you're standing close enough to the sneaky bow you won't get caught Just Don't Stray too far in the jail cell you'll find another vote this one's here because he misses his wife and kid as it turns out his wife works at the Secret clothing shop and he could see his kid running around the underground back when everyone was in the shelter it's a bit sad to realize that even though the Gerudo go out of their way to train on how to pick up vo and then go on these super long quests in search of the love of their life when they do have a kid that kid is required to return to Gerudo Town once they reach a certain age sure hope we don't run into anyone who has to deal with this tradition later in the game kinda makes sense why there's a dating class for the Garuda all of a sudden and since link is the only vo legally allowed in town he can help out with this class by covering his face buying a drink and bringing this wreath as a conversation topic overall Gerudo Town offers a lot of lore free items and I no longer have to change clothes just to walk around here so it gets the a tier korok Forest when you first arrive in this Woodland town everything is withered and all of the koroks are more dead inside than when a YouTuber posts a video and it gets a 10 out of 10. all you have to do is jump down the hole inside of the great trees navel and defeat the spooky hands in Phantom Ganon then the forest gets back to its cheery self even has to comes back here from the cloud Landing when everyone is feeling oh yeah you can access to the more shrines you can look for some hidden Woodland weapons and Ascend into the secret room inside the great Deku tree's mouth it looks pretty but there's not much to do here and you can't touch any of it because this is by this guy's design it's like his Animal Crossing Island don't mess with it it's perfect it's aesthetic that's it the only reason you would ever come back is to trade your korok seats for extra storage which is also probably the last thing any completionist wants to do when playing this game the Shakalaka Town gets a c kakariko Village several giant rings have fallen from the sky changing the overall look of this quaint little chica town the Chicken Guy now researches Sky ruins which was a pretty fun side quest in my opinion meanwhile his chicken is regarding the old 80s Plum Garden also why are the clothes so expensive turns out this girl's grandma is sick and they need the money to pay for medicine wow even the gorons were using their money for drugs were charging less than these guys the good news is that once you made medicine for Grandma the prices come back down to normal there were a couple of more fun side quests like looking for the sleepy and owner who kind of just made bets for the research team and then decided to take a really long nap apart from getting to check out the sky rings and the story Quest and going on an expedition with this buff dude not much else happens here it's one of the few places you can buy carrots and every day you get a wreath from this little girl for only 5 rupees I guess that's the Zelda version of a lemonade stand and there's one bit of evidence for everyone wondering what the heck happened to all of the breath of the wild stuff in this game I mean the shrines are all gone the Guardians are gone the Divine beasts are not to be heard of everything is gone everything except for the painting of The Prophecy from the first game so I guess there's at least a little bit of lore and random quest to do here so I guess I'll give it a b hatano Village this peaceful farming Village in the east of Hyrule is now decorated with a bunch of random mushroom sculptures and everyone's dressed kind of weird at first I thought that maybe some kind of parasitic fungal monster had infiltrated the town but nope it's just a clothing designer named CeCe coming back to revolutionize hateno The Villages caught in a struggle between farming and fashion an election between the current mayor and CeCe herself you even get to go around passing mushrooms to those who aren't already on CC's side and sneak around at night to get some dirt on both candidates turns out that the mayor is secretly working to develop a mushroom looking pumpkin so that their produce fits the style of Cece's brand meanwhile CeCe is sneaking off to munch on the fresh local grown produce which she loves oh so much you also get this creepy guy who's in love with the shop girl and then asks us the wingman for him and he ends up having to collect 100 frogs for her because apparently that's what she likes not really but it's kind of like when someone walks up to you and says hey what's your favorite food so what is it comment below favorite food now the only thing that comes to mind for me is being since it's one of the few things I can eat at the moment anyways this town also has a school started by Zelda and the Shiga Clan teaching the kiddos of hatano about history culinary arts and some other things Zelda used to help out at the school a lot but since she's gone now it's up to her substitute teacher link to do his thing once the school Quest is complete you get access to the school's Gardens and can ask this old lady to grow a bunch of crops for you it's a nice way to save money on cooking ingredients and you can keep coming back for more there's also the dye shop where you can recolor your armor and change your paraglider a lot of different paraglider patterns can be obtained through various side quests and completionist events like this pop art style one that you get from helping Addison put up every single sign in Hyrule if you've played the first game you know that link bought a house here but it's no longer Link's house it's Zelda's house and maybe it's a shared home because there's still some remnants of Link's possessions and if you go down the well you'll find Zelda has a secret study there and a hair tie for link if you go uphill you run into the Farms where you can trade nuts for milk and milk for cheese or you can just outright by the cheese yourself and and with the cheese you can make pizza everybody loves pizza 10 out of 10 game at the very very top of the village you also have the lab where Robbie helps you update your Pura pad so that you can search for things you've taken pictures of complete your picture ducks and grab a travel Medallion so that you can actually teleport into the towns you go to frequently and not to the one Shrine that's kind of close but you still gotta walk quite a bit before you actually get to the useful stuff not sure why they did that with the shrine placements in this game's towns but I found it a bit inconvenient anyways there's so much to do in this town and so much lore to learn that I cannot give it anything less than an S for super stylish lural land Village I was very surprised when I arrived at this once peaceful fishing Village because there's pretty much no Village left monster Pirates have rated everything and the villagers fled into safety you may have already talked to some of them like the lady in hatano Village or the shopkeepers in Lookout Landing Boston and the mayor can be found at a nearby Cliff trying to figure out what to do and what else then call upon the hero of Hyrule to take down this monster Fortress this was one of my favorite battles since you're not just attacking a random monster Outpost with a small army of hylians you're single-handedly taking on Pirates to free a village and the mission isn't done until every last monster is defeated including this one guy that's hiding inside of the well I think he just fell down there once the Pirates are gone boson asks for some materials to start rebuilding getting the rice was easy since it would spawn in when you cut the grass near the village but getting the logs was another story my first idea was to get all the logs right next to the stable and then just cart them over but my horse was too weak so then I built a barely functional car for the task which did work great at first but then I stopped to get some more logs since I needed 15 and it is at that moment that I learned that there is in fact a glue limit I guess I'll just have to carry it myself since that was super slow I thought why not use an actual card except I messed up and accidentally dropped all my logs in the water yeah they're kind of stuck down there for good take two this time I'm getting the logs from a nearby Forest clumping them all together throw them down the hill and they're gone no more logs 10 out of 10 game long frustration aside you also get to Place Palm fruits in the center of some homes so that Bolson can rebuild them or do other random tasks like clean out the debris from the end eventually The Village gets fixed up and its residents return and since you're the hero who saved your home you get a bunch of freebies you can stay at the end for free you get free food from the restaurant a chest with a random amount of rupees free weapons and free gambling you can also find the island Lobster shirt which made exploring the Gerudo desert very easy even without the whole desert voset thing and last but not least you get a boat race minigame which I did once and I'm never gonna go do again the sea is not for me overall I really enjoyed getting to do actual hero stuff to save and restore a village and despite struggling to collect the logs the rewards felt worth my time with so many freebies I often come back to lulin whenever I need to rest grab some extra food or restock on a powerful weapon although this whole village is completely optional I'm glad I came all the way out here to see everything it had to offer a tier Terrytown hey have you heard of Hudson the esteemed owner of Hudson construction here to build your dream home you support him too don't you this is a peaceful little town full of people whose names end and sun and right next to it you have a field packed to the broom with zonite devices that fell out of the sky the research team has been building hot air balloons and cars you can build your own vehicle and drive around the obstacle course to see just how fast you can go this was a fun thing to do once Terrytown has a new Resident kilton who likes to show off all the different monsters from around Hyrule Hudson will gladly build sculptures of them as long as you have a photo reference so there's a whole questline where you go and take pictures of these various monsters and then set up their sculptures on a stage sadly there is a limit on how many can exist at the time and they all have to be placed on the platform so you can't just take one home and make yourself a Lino bike with the zonai material speaking of taking things Holmes and Zelda owns your home now in hotel know link is once again homeless good thing he can buy a second property near Terrytown what a lucky duck I can't even afford to think about buying a first property let alone a second one maybe it's affordable for him because it's not quite an entire town more like a 10 minute walk from town I mean you can see the town but you're not really close to anyone except for this guy he basically lives at your house at first I like the whole block structure but then I realized half of these cubes don't come with doors so it's a bit weird to connect all the pieces together and ended up having a bunch of rooms just out in the open what I really wanted to do is have a place where I can display all of my Champions weapons because hylia knows I'm never gonna use them again the last thing left to do in Tarrytown is to spend some time with Madison Hudson's daughter who's almost at the age where she has to go back to Gerudo town this little one likes teaching the elderly some Gerudo terms and then tries to sneak past this greedy guy who charges you money to use the rail car and she gets by all thanks to my handy dandy wall of Hudson cutouts he doesn't like it if you do that later in the game though and finally we get to paint a hot air balloon and give Hudson and his family one last view of Terry town from the sky before little Madison sets off the Gerudo or Hudson he's a good dad the tears in my eyes almost made me forget that this is the only town that sells monster extract for cooking as well as offer a service to split apart weapons and the materials attached to them this is a great thing if you want to attach Gems or rare monster drops to your weapons so as long as you stop using them before they break you can come here and for the low low cost of 20 rupees you can get the rare item back overall it's a pretty cool little town with lots of silly and useful features a heartwarming story and the only place you can get yourself the Hudson Shield a rank conclusion I find it a bit interesting how this open world game gave more lore and attention to its optional side to towns instead of the main story towns in a way it felt more rewarding to go and explore instead of stick to the places you're supposed to visit although I wouldn't go and call any of the towns in this game outright bad I think it would have been nice to see some more lore and character stories especially in the big four part of why I liked Gerudo town on the most is because it spent some time exploring the local culture and history there's literally a guy in jail because it's illegal for guys to be in the town whereas the other three kind of just stuck with certain themes like we gotta be better Warriors and nothing more of course this criticism comes from a selfish desire to experience an immersive world I personally enjoy seeing RPG towns that show the struggles of the locals their customs and culture will give you useful establishments that fit well within the context of the town getting a small farm in the farming village where a guy who can deconstruct your weapons in a town that's all about construction I've arrived at this set of criteria by observing what made me personally enjoy exploring and revisiting towns and games but I will acknowledge that there's probably more to it than that if you have any ideas what makes a town good especially in RPGs do comment down below I plan on making a few more of these so if there's another game you'd like to see me analyze do let me know in the meantime feel free to check out this video on the shrines and tears of the Kingdom or this playlist with the other Town analysis videos I've made thanks for watching stay healthy and I hope to see you around

Channel: Vasko Games

Views: 18,686

Keywords: Vasko Towns, Totk Towns, Hateno Village, Totk Town Review, Vasko Town Review, Vasko Best and worst towns, Totk best and worst towns

Id: wFAGrnXbwho

Length: 22min 1sec (1321 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023