Video: It's Finally Time To Talk About Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom's Ending

The final boss fight was amazing. Sure, the dragon was easy but it was still exciting. And the battle against Ganondorf was perfect. Arguably the boss fight the Zelda series has ever seen.

The ending? I honestly don't remember the ending.
But there were plenty of memorable story points prior to the ending, so I don't mind that it doesn't stand out in my memory.

Can’t use a fishing rod 0/10

A great epic 30-adrenaline-filled-minutes finale in a 200 hour slog fest.

Give me more of those final minutes in a traditional Zelda game please.
It feels like a chore when, to reach the epic good short parts of a game, you have to play hundreds of hours.

The open-world format lends to this, as there is no real story progression that affects the narrative of the world mid-game... leaving you with only the epic beginning - 190 hour filler middle - epic finale.

There's no dynamic story moments that affect the game or your journey.

I was shocked by how simple the Ganondorf fight was. I went in with heavy armor, and he couldn't even hurt me.

He was way easier then the boss rush that led up to him, and didn't even play a round of dead man's volley (Ganondorf's signature move).

The whole fight seemed to be a joke based around Ganondorf's health bar.

I have to admit I didn’t fully understand the TOTK story. Maybe it’s my brain or maybe it’s the endless distractions to the main story, or the random order in which the story unfolds, or simply the months it took to complete the game. I just couldn’t remember what it was all about.

It wasn’t until I watched Zeltik’s video that I fully understood what the hell was going on and it turns out TOTK is a brilliant story after all. But compared to other more traditional Zelda games, I just couldn’t follow.

I found the boss fight to be kind of an annoying chore more than anything, though at the time I did it I was pretty well past ready to be done with the game anyway so I kind of just wanted to get it over with.

The boss fight is among the best I’ve ever played and the ending is, well, one of the endings of all time.

Sacrifice undone. Having her cake and eating it too.

I like a happy ending but I don’t like a build up that ends with “just kidding”

@YoshiFR2

agreed. there are some stand out moments, some of the best in the series, but the overall flow and pacing is appalling.

The ending didn't really hit me but the act of getting the master sword in this game is among the most memorable. Never in all that time would one have realized that the sword was flying around you high in the sky! I feel having Zelda return after the "ultimate sacrifice" was kind of a cop out but I wasn't expecting Zelda to reinvent the wheel there.

My old brain doesn't allow me to recall much these days but I was glad I did all of the side characters first before the final battle. Also glad I had 60 armor, 20 each on the glowly mine pieces, and about 100 bombs, I bought every one the statue head had for like 1,500 spirits. I didn't like the final dragon battle all that much, and I think the lionel was harder than the boss, but the triple silver lionel bow w/ the bombs helped make mince meat out of Ganon.

All the after happy ending battle stuff I liked as well. Who doesn't like a happy ending?🤷‍♂️

@TheMegaMarshtomp use the Master Sword when he use a Gloom shot at you, do a spin attack with the Master Sword and reflect this attack back at them.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ed9x6A8wPW0&si=UpTHyftoS-tD6aQ0

I want to finish but have to find Koruok complete and Flag signs and all the subquest first.

@YoshiFR2 you certainly couldve rushed towards it sooner if ya wanted

Loved the ending and thought the story was amazing from start to finish. Definitely one of my favorite games this year but I haven’t played it in months since i finished the main story.

Fantastic ending, I had a hunch throughout the game that I’d be fighting Dragondorf at the end, I wasn’t let down.

Six years is going to be a long wait for the next big Zelda..

I should go back and play some more, I haven't touched it since June I think? I don't remember the ending at all but the dragon was really cool.

They made such a big deal about the dragon transformation being permanent and how Zelda would be sacrificing her own self for it and then I gues it just wasn't? It was a total copout, I hated that.

Anyone else finish the final boss fight and then look at the game’s logo…

Appreciate you waiting for me to finish it last week! Really loved my playthrough, but like most Zelda games, any good story beats ToTK had were wasted on flat characters and a bad script. I dunno, maybe try finally letting Link talk next time, and see if that helps.

…That said, the dragon battle at the end was extremely rad (even if they sold out Zelda’s sacrifice by restoring the status quo immediately afterwards)

The ending was good with what they did with Zelda. The boss fight was…kinda easy like the 4 Sage Bosses. The look was good but Ganon was sooo slow. Lynels and Gleeoks were much tougher battles.

Loved the final boss fight and that whole segment of the game in general. I skipped the lionel haha. Wish i had of had stronger armour and more gloom down potions. I ended up getting slaughtered by Ganon a couple of times during the double flurry rush part.

Amazing after i finished it i put in another 100 hours or. I was so hyped for this game and it was everything i could have wanted. Unfortunately I've picked and dropped like five games since. Ultimately i think its a good thing. TotK had me playing way too long which often isn't very compatible with adult life.

@OFFICIALMichi Loved the final boss fight, but gotta agree with you that the story's ending was pretty disappointing in that regard. It kind of negates her sacrifice (yeah I know she was still a dragon for millennia) when Nintendo decided to not fully commit to her fate.

Yeah, overall I loved the game but I was not a fan of its story at all, especially the way it was told. Wooden voice acting, flavorless dialogue, and repetitive story beats just made the main narrative a pain to sit through, even more than BotW's which wasn't that great to begin with. The fact that the memories unlocked out of order again was ridiculous to me. One of the first ones I got was Ganondorf just murdering Queen Sonia with no context, like wtf? It would have made a lot more sense to just have the memories unlocked chronologically regardless of the location you get them from, especially because most of the memories aren't tied to the geography of where you get them. Like BotW, story is definitely this game's weak point. Outside of the opening descent into the crypt, there's very little I'll remember from this game's plot.

@rjejr Looking by the comments section, a bunch of people would have preferred a more tragic ending. I just think that after everything Zelda went through in both games, she deserved it.

I loved the ending....save for one thing... I wanted something that connects Ganondorf to Calamity Ganon. It's not even acknowledged. I was hoping it may have been pushed to DLC, but with news that nothing is in the works...I guess not.

@Kazman2007 Unless it's actually explained in some outside material, we'll just have to assume that Calamity Ganon was Ganondorf's evil gradually leaking out over the course of ages.

No Triforce, and no Kass. 2/10

I haven’t gotten to the end quite yet. Should have waited a bit longer! ;__;

This guys need to launch a podcast, ill watch it

I'm saving the last 2 temples for later. So, I'm not looking at the article.

Best part of the game IMO

I think the ending works, because Zelda was a dragon for like what, a couple thousand years or so? I feel that saving Zelda at the end, while simple was pretty emotional. Not as good as Skyward Sword's ending. But better than Breath of the Wild's for sure.

I got Cece’s hat and gave up. That was fun, the rest was booooring.

@MonadoBoy they looked at the line “SECRET STONE? DEMON KING!?” and said yes, this is the line we need to have in there as much as possible.

After complaining about this game for a long time, the ending sequence with the dragons made me cry for 10 minutes straight (sorry, no spoiler warnings under articles like this)
But the very last scenes in the grass copied Princess Mononoke again (both in terms of setting and music) and lacked impact for me.

So just like the rest of the game, the ending was full of high highs and a few frustrating lows.

Still an amazing accomplishment, just not very good as a sequel to BotW and I’ve enjoyed Sea of Stars about a 100 times more.

@TheMegaMarshtomp the fight wasn’t bad, but i wish there was a mid fight throwback to Shadow Ganon fight from Ocarina, or more challenge in general, and the Dragon Part was super disappointing- it felt like a different game- Zero Challenge compared to other Ganon transformations in other games.

@Zeldo pay attention more- mainly for such an amazing game. It has an amazing story, except for some repeated cutscenes. Great trowbacks to Ocarina too!

@MonadoBoy I think the core story was great , but the repeated story sections after each main boss was stupid. Also Dragon transformation was sooo easy and boring, and the Zelda sacrifice lost meaning after they brought her back! They could have at least make that into a secret ending only if the player solves some riddles throughout the story.

@BrazillianCara that doesn’t need any explanation, no?!!!

The tragic ending would perhaps have even more emotional impact, but maybe you have to fill in the blanks here to make it work. For the sage of time, nothing is permanent. So Zelda's detransformation didn't strike me as inconsistent.

For me, the first part of the boss fight was the most memorable, because I had only one heart remaining that was not gloom-affected and had run out of gloom cures. So the final strike was literally him or me. That was my first and, so far, only attempt.

I don't think I've ever completed a final boss fight in any game without dying at least once. Funny thing is, I went out and did 8 more shrines before. I exchanged for 1 heart and 1 stamina container, then reloaded the save and chose 2 hearts instead.

I absolutely loved every second from the moment I started the descent underneath Hyrule Castle until the credits had rolled. I was at the perfect level of skill and preparation at the time, and had just a few hearts left when Ganondorf went down. It created a truly memorable last fight.

Obviously the fight up above the castle is a smokeshow that´s designed to look and feel epic rather than challenge you, but I was all in at that point - way too caught up in the spectacle of the thing to care if the game had its training-wheels on.

Diving down towards Zelda as we both plummet towards Hyrule below - while the music swells into the main theme of the game - was an image I had in my head from the first trailer, and I kinda mentally put it away when Zeldas fate was fully revealed. At that point, I just wanted her to be returned to normal, and obviously the final boss is going to be in the depths so... I can´t really overstate how oddly emotional I got when Link opened his eyes while in a freefall during the last 20 seconds of gameplay. Absolutely indescribable.

@gloom ...or you could have not watched the video yet since you haven't gotten to the ending. Sounds like you did this to yourself honestly.

@Furealz Exactly. And she couldn't have known she would be detransformed, so the sacrifice isn't meaningless.

@YoshiFR2 That is why I quickly got bored of this game and shelved it for now. It was just too much of the same again, after playing god knows how many hours of BOTW over the years.

TOTK is really an open sandbox game I feel, more focussed on building crazy stuff and where Story took a major back seat, except for the beginning and then the end it seems.

While BOTW on the other hand, had a great overarching story, with major story lines building up to it (like the Divine Beasts and lots of other great quest lines, etc ), with the open world as a sandbox to play in if you so wished. So it more than deserved the Game of the Year award that year.

Just before the fight with on-the-ground Ganon, after the big "endless" minions battle, I was down quite a few hearts, out of sunny meals, and finally had to dive into my almost untouched collection of temporary cooking pots. I made a load of sunny stews down there in the depths.

One thing that is weird in the cut-scenes is when Ganon or Zelda eat the secret stones. Nom nom nom, gulp! Mmmm, tasty. It looks so silly.

Also, I'm glad they didn't go with a sad ending, having Zelda stuck as a permanent derp-faced dragon would have been awful.

@Znake The Dragon part was the only part I found fitting a climactic ending. Sure it wasn't challenging, but it was grandiose.

The rest of the fight felt WAY easier and simpler then the final boss in Twilight Princess. I think Demon King Ganon should of had at least one more phase before giving up and eating his hand... I mean Secret Stone.

I thought Zelda turning back to normal would have had a better effect of there was any explanation for it. Rauru's ghost appears, stares at Link, and suddenly Zelda is falling from the sky. If Rauru had the power of anti-draconification, he should have spoken up earlier!

@BrazillianCara I could understand people thinking of it as a "cop out" and it means Zelda's sacrifice didn't mean anything if she can just come back, but I like a happy ending. Seems like every tv show and game I watch and play these days everyone just does at the end so it was nice for this one.

I'm in the camp that finds TOTK to be a very mixed bag, but that final boss is unquestionably one of the highlights for me: I can't be certain whether or not it's my favorite Zelda final boss, but it's certainly in the top three. My only criticism of the ending is Link getting his arm back: I imagine it's at least partly so that if they decide to make a third game with this Link, they won't need to either keep the Ultrahand abilities or come up with a reason why he doesn't have them anymore, but in a series where the player character goes through several reincarnations, this Link continuing life with a prosthesis of equal if not greater functionality to his original arm doesn't strike me as a tremendous downer (conversely, Zelda's restoration was probably the right move for a number of reasons).

@OFFICIALMichi I think it would be so much better if Zelda is still a dragon at the end, and if Players continued playing after reaching the end, maybe some secret caves could hold ancient scripts on how to reverse the Draconification and we could revert her form post credits. This way the draconification lost some impact but also agree with one of you saying that Zelda didn’t know she might transform back so from her point of view it was a huge step anyway.

@TheMegaMarshtomp I would prefer if there was a sad ending too really appreciate Zelda’s sacrifice, and then have some puzzling side quests with the ruins where Zelda describes throughout the ruins a possible way to turn her back that only She knew but wouldn’t say it to anyone so that Ganondorf wouldn’t know. It would be a fun story quest still even after finishing the main boss!