I hope you're well!

I'm a simple person, I see something slightly touching on rain world I immediately must consume it

Raz, congrats to you and Lady 🎉 Although a second baby is an adjustment, and yes you have to go through the newborn stage again. It comes with the experience of you have done it before and survived. Also, watching the relationship between my two grow has been one of the best things in my life (aside from meeting my husband).

Your ending summary reminded me of my favorite quote from the Stormlight Archive. "This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you Kaladin: You will be warm again."

The way you describe Totk is exactly what I feel ( and I’m sure many others feel ) about the game that I was never able to put into words. It’s so accurate

Wow, the TOTK section pretty much echoed my exact feelings. I put right about 250 hours in that game over the course of a month or two, and while I expected the more sandboxy design to bring me back over and over again, I haven’t touched it since. It was a spectacular experience, but not a revolutionary one. All it really makes me want to do is go back and play BOTW. Although, if there’s one part of TOTK that was even more memorable than BOTW, it’s the music. Those songs are transcendent.

EDIT: Most of the replies to my comment so far are people saying that this doesn't make sense because TOTK is just BOTW with more stuff, or that I'm exaggerating. I've continued to think about this topic a lot since I commented, so allow me to elaborate. I like BOTW more than TOTK, and the reason is pretty simple: BOTW is a perfect game. Now, I'm not saying that BOTW doesn't have flaws. It does. But to me, perfection in a videogame does not mean "flawless", it means "synergistic" or "harmonious". A perfect game is a closed system where every element of its design complements and meshes with some or every other element. BOTW achieved this. It had a beautiful open world with interesting things to do around every corner. It had a simple and satisfying combat system that encouraged exploration through durability. The character-focused, flashback-based story worked no matter what order you experienced it in, making it the perfect fit for an open world game. And the ability to challenge the final boss at any time gave you true freedom in how you decided to play the game. You can see how every major element, from the map to the gameplay to the story to the final boss, was designed to fit in with every other element like cogs in a clock.
The problem with perfection is that it's extremely difficult to improve upon. Once you have a closed system of complementary design elements, you can't just add or change anything major because the system was designed from the ground up to work with itself. Some people are confused why you would ever return to BOTW when TOTK is just BOTW with more stuff. But that's exactly the problem. TOTK didn't change the BOTW formula to accommodate all the new stuff it added, it just tacked on more content. The new content is certainly fun, but it doesn't fit as perfectly into the BOTW formula. A great example is the story. TOTKs story uses the same flashback structure as BOTW, but it doesn't work nearly as well. The grander story, with more focus on events than characters, would have been better served by a more linear game.  In fact, I restarted my first playthrough dozens of hours in just so I could play through the game in what I felt like was the "right order". I didn't have to do that for BOTW, because BOTW worked hard to make sure any order was the right order.
I also want to stress that a huge part of my preference for BOTW over TOTK is that I just don't like the Zonai. The Sheikah were a huge part of Zelda lore already, and BOTW gave them new depth by introducing the Sheikah technology. On the other hand, the Zonai are a brand new Zelda race, yet TOTK told us almost nothing about them, so it's hard to care about them that much. I think I would have liked TOTK much more if the Zonai were an ancient or offshoot tribe of Sheikah instead of just a new aesthetic slapped on the "technologically advanced ancient race" archetype. I have exactly the same issue regarding the Secret Stones vs the Triforce.
Finally, I just want to say that I love Tears of the Kingdom. The Zonai devices and new dungeons were very fun and well designed. I just wanted to explain why I prefer Breath of the Wild, and hopefully show people like me why TOTK didn't impact them as much as BOTW.

I have the same desktop image as the thumbnail of this video🙀

I haven't played rain world in a while, but that game and ESPECIALLY the downpour DLC, really grabbed me in a way that I really didn't expect. No spoilers, but the way the story and map progress through the timeline across the different campaigns is really interesting and unique. That sense of exploration and new discovery isn't something a lot of games replicate for me. Even when I was almost straight up not having fun there was still always that push to find the next cool thing. Sincerely recommend Downpour, it's so good.

I do wish, that Silksong would come out this year, but I know that I'm just inhaling a pure COPIUM at this point

By the way, I know the Switch noise was mostly just a segway to the ad, but in case you need the info: that harrowing noise is just the fan that ate through its lubricant, if you fix it quickly it's actually really fast and cheap to repair.
I had that happen to my D1 Switch and I thought it was dead but it's actually back and healthy now.

I haven’t been having the best time lately, and I don’t comment too often, but thank you for this Raz. You’re probably my favorite youtuber, and your deep dive into your emotions and experiences resonates very deeply with me. Hope you have a great 2024 with lots of games to get you through it!

when i first played rain world i hated it but forced myself to finish the game. It so happens that I bought the game together with the downpour dlc, so I started a new game as the artificer and realized how beautiful this game is, and also completed all other campaigns, definitely my favorite game of the year. I'm glad I got through these over 20 hours and had a great time afterwards

as someone who is currently always drowning, and trying to keep my head above water... it was really nice to hear that you were there, and made it to a place where you're not anymore

Wow, your experience of TOTK was honestly so similar to how I found it. I really enjoyed it and can see that in a lot of ways it’s a much better game, but BOTW made so much more of an impact for me

Rain World spotted. Video watched.

Rain World mentioned 🌧️🌍🐌🐈🐌🐈🐌🐈🔥🔥🔥🔥

For what it's worth, I actually feel the opposite towards Tears of the Kingdom as you do, in the sense that I've thought about it frequently since I finished it, and it's absolutely superseded BOTW in my mind... but I think a large part of why you feel that way is probably because of your strong inclination towards BOTW.

The single biggest issue with Tears, bar none, is that it is, ultimately, Breath of the Wild 2. And for someone like me, who picked up BOTW exactly twice after finishing it in 2017, that meant I got to re-experience all of BOTW's magic all over again, but with hugely-expanded options and overall less tedium. But for other people - folks like you who are strongly attached to BOTW, folks who didn't like BOTW at all and were hoping for the opposite of what we got, etc etc - Tears is just "even more BOTW".

To put it another way, Tears of the Kingdom is Super Mario Galaxy 2. SMG2 is (arguably) a much improved, more expansive and more interesting game than SMG1, but SMG1 felt newer, felt fresher, and left a massive impression on people and the industry at large. Galaxy 2 is better in terms of gameplay, but being such a direct sequel means it was always going to be overshadowed by the original. And no matter how much better Tears' story, gameplay and overall design are than BOTW's, it's unfortunately caught in the same situation.

I like how the ending of this video ended up being kinda the antithesis of the name of this series - the games didn't get you through 2023, you did, and they just helped you realise that. Love your content as always, the way you blend your life (while maintaining your privacy) with how the games impacted you is appreciated as its a much more even split than gaming channels would often have you believe, and that split is the beautiful part where life happens ❤ great vid, have a wonderful 2024!

Funny, I actually had the OPPOSITE experience with Tears of the Kingdom. Breath of the Wild is also my favorite game of all time, so I deliberately lowered my excitement for ToTK. I didn’t expect it to change my life, or become my new favorite game of all time. But it did. I feel very lucky, and I’m sad you didn’t love it as much as I did

Rain world might be one of the most frustrating, obtuse, and unfriendly video games I’ve ever played. It also might be the best piece of art I’ve ever experienced through gaming. Definitely my game of 2023.