The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

And there we go! It took me such a long time to get through this. I didn't fully 100% this, but I got all the shrines and lightroots, so that feels pretty good.

Tears of the Kingdom takes Breath of the Wild's world and expands it with sky islands and a huge underground map. While neither are super well done and still struggle with the open-world feeling overall emptier, they are welcome additions. I think Breath of the Wild is still better because I didn't love the Zonai devices. While it allowed for more creativity, it just ended up feeling tedious with all the trial and error.

Fusing didn't really fix weapons breaking like it was advertised, so that was a bit of a shame. I definitely hit a slump playing this game as I just feel like it's way too long. Obviously, I could've just bee-lined through the main objectives and completed the story, but I would have missed out on side quests, exploring the world, etc. I think the padded length and over-reliance on Zonai devices made this less fun than BotW, but I couldn't possibly give this game 3 stars. The amount of work that went into developing this game shows that Nintendo really cared. I don't know if it's a hot take that I think Breath of the Wild is better, but those are my thoughts.

I am moving this to my backlog. I think playing BotW for the second time not long before this game was announced made me grow tired of this version of Hyrule, and it feels like I am playing BotW all over again...

So I will put in on hold and get back to it later. I don't think we will have a mainline Zelda game in for a while anyways, so I'm not in a rush at all.

I am extremely conflicted about this game.

On the one hand, it does so many incredible things, like the physics and building mechanics, as well as the insanely large and fun-to-explore world it inherited from Breath of the Wild.

But on the other hand, it is a massive disappointment—a six-year wait for what amounts to a DLC, albeit a huge one. The most frustrating part is that the main draw of this "version" of BOTW, the Sky Islands, are so scarce.

When I started the game, I had a ton of fun exploring the Great Sky Island. But looking out from this island to the horizon, I began to get this sinking feeling that there wasn't much else out there. Upon touching the ground and looking back up at the sky, I couldn't believe my eyes. That's it? A few dozen tiny islands? This is all they managed to create in six years?

Fortunately, I had avoided all trailers of the game except for the very first teaser. So, discovering the Ultrahand abilities, realizing how powerful they were, and imagining the myriad of things you could do with them was a real treat. The next mind-blowing surprise was the Depths. At first, I thought where I first landed was just one of a number of large caves underground. Realizing that it was the same size as the overworld was astounding.

While the Depths have barely any variation, I still had a lot of fun searching for all the Lightroots and mapping the whole thing out. At least in the beginning, it was a tense experience. But in the overworld... fatigue set in after some hours.

I was extremely thorough in exploring the world in BOTW. Exploration is one of my favorite activities in video games, so I had the time of my life discovering it all. But even after all these years, I remembered it all too well. What was left of that incredible sense of discovery was just a fraction of what I felt when I played the predecessor. I still found some enjoyment in exploring, but it wasn’t as thrilling anymore. Thankfully, the Sky Islands were fun, but whenever I was up there, I also felt this underlying disappointment dragging down the whole experience for me.

Playing TOTK was a constant tug-of-war between immense enjoyment and massive disappointment. The whole time, I kept thinking about all the lost potential. At some point, the fatigue that grew from feeling like I had done all this before became too much, and so I stopped playing. I tried getting back into it here and there, but I barely touched it for the following year. Now, more than a year after release, I finally finished it.

In these final hours, I grew to dislike the game more and more, but I couldn't leave it unfinished. The game's flaws just became increasingly apparent to me: few and uninspiring dungeons, a completely awful story, horrible voice acting and characters, shrines that often felt like a chore, and a combat system that remains unimproved.

I was a huge defender of the weapon-breaking system in BOTW. I didn't hate it like so many others. But the weapon fusion system, even though a great addition, made it even worse. It got so annoying that I started avoiding enemies almost entirely. I would have much preferred if the weapons lasted longer, but in order to balance the game, there should be fewer weapon slots, in my opinion.

But then again, the loot found in this world would become even more useless. Finding items felt so pointless that, in the end, exploring the world and experimenting with building cool things was pretty much all that was left. But these two aspects were still top-notch and a masterclass of design, rarely found in the gaming world.

I saw a thumbnail for a YouTube video I haven't watched yet titled "A Disappointing Masterpiece," and that describes the game perfectly; this phrase kept popping into my head while playing. That, and how unbelievably amazing this entire experience would have been if BOTW had never existed... and if the Sky Islands weren’t so sparse. This is why I simply cannot give this game a bad rating, even though my experience with it was so frustrating.

As a standalone game, TOTK is an incredible masterpiece—but not in the context of what came before. I sincerely hope Nintendo will return to the classic Zelda style, updated for the modern era, for at least a couple of games.

The game is filled with tons of... well... filler.

Initial hours were AWESOME, as the sky island was basically made to use everything you have. Once you get to the surface... it just looks like BotW 2.0, and no, that's not good.

You get some new powers (lose some others), but everything else is almost the same. Same story progression (initial place, you go to the same 4 places where you had to go in BotW), same world (yep, new things, most are just... fillers), new zones are a mess (I don't get the underground. It's just getting the map noise of surface, making it a -1, and that's all, like not much creativity there), and sky islands were repetitive.

To be honest, I'm a bit biased as I don't really like BotW's approach that much. I loved the old formula way too much, and really dislike the fact that here, you have everything at the start. It felt as in older games, everything was "hand-made", whereas on these, it's just "let's give them a lot of content they can do, so they just explore the whole map, no matter if it's fun or not". I don't feel things as connected and well designed as they were in all the previous 3D entrances.

Tears of the Kingdom manages to build on an already classic entry by improving and adding so much on top of the BotW model that it feels like a completely different (and superior) title and one of the finest Zelda games ever made.

After an exploration beneath Hyrule Castle goes wrong, the Master Sword is shattered and a great Upheaval wreaks chaos upon Hyrule. Learning about the ancient and technologically advanced race of the Zonai, Link gains their powers and seeks to find a missing Zelda. While that sets off an expansive adventure, that barely covers the iceberg that is Tears's new Hyrule.

Link retains a lot of abilities/actions from Breath of the Wild such as swordplay (and flurry rushes), paragliding, arrows, climbing, etc. Tears adds onto these with the Zonai abilities - Link may now fuse weapons with materials to increase durability and add boosts in power/effects, jump through flat ceilings to reach new heights with relative ease, rewind object motion, and use the Ultrahand to fuse objects into new structures. This is later expanded upon with Zonai devices that can create vehicles, rockets, balloons, cars, gliders, and behemoths only limited by the player's creativity. Combined with the nonlinear gameplay of BotW and the ways of approaching Hyrule are many, if not endless.

Hyrule is now split into three massive areas - the land of Hyrule (covered with 120 shrines), the sky islands above (32 shrines), and the depths below Hyrule, with special lightroots that illuminate a massive darkness. The reward to exploring the Depths is addicting enough, but the shrines have gotten an overhaul to create more interesting challenges that truly test the player's understanding of both Hyrule's geography and key mechanics of the game and its Zonai devices. For dozens of shrines I felt like I was learning something essential with each puzzle, and the majority of the game can be spent mapping out the world.

There's plenty of side and main questing to do as well, and while the side quests are many (and at times overwhelming), they can reward the player with plenty of materials and upgrades to increase Zonai power, armor rating, and other such things to fight the monsters lurking around every corner. Tears starts off fairly cruel to beginners but rewards constant exploration and resourceful use of weapons and powers. While the fated end still requires solid combat skills, there's plenty to do to prepare for that encounter.

The main quests are fairly light compared to the massive landscape of Hyrule, but the warm and pleasant interactions with Link and his allies combined with Zelda discovering her past and the secret history of Hyrule create an engaging yarn that pays off with some incredible climaxes. The main temples are much more well designed as well, having centralized designs that still encourage non-linearity but have flavors more suited to their environments (Fire, Water, Lightning, etc temples). Boss fights can vary in difficulty but are well managed once the player is upgraded and ready. Some optional enemies will be more than a match for early game Link (see: Gleeok) but with enough effort and investment nothing will stop our hero.

As for art style and sound, Tears adopts the broad cel-shaded colors of Breath to remain as gorgeous as ever, showcasing autumnal sky against the lush greenery of Hyrule to the diseased purple depths - the environment is richer than ever thanks to this use of color. Sound is still relatively sparse, with ambient themes procedurally making their way across the landscape combined with exciting battle themes returning from Breath and a few others along the way. I was tempted to fight Gleeoks simply to hear that triumphant battle theme once again.

Tears of the Kingdom is a massive game but never felt too exhausting for me. One can put 100 or so hours into it but the very rewarding amount of exploration and character growth can only add to a very satisfying end for Link and Zelda's modern adventures... (or is it?). It's truly a testament to how you can always improve a classic and make it even more so.

I finally went back to TOTK while visiting family for the holiday. I had the Water, Desert and Spirit (if you even want to consider it a dungeon) Temple remaining. Overall, my opinion of the game hasn't changed. I did feel like the end game was fairly half-baked. I didn't feel like going through the long grind to max out an armor set, so the late game enemies could almost one shot me while also inflicting gloom. It's frustrating that you need to go to the different dragons multiple times, who have unreliable locations since they can go underground or above ground making finding them both tedious and annoying, since you can only acquire one item from a dragon at a time...

In general, I felt like the gloom mechanic wasn't well developed since it was basically an annoying mechanic that was negated through food or an armor sets. It probably would have been better to have a quest that removed the Gloom as an alternative and show progression in the game world. The water temple boss was pretty annoying to fight with the oil mechanic, making it more frustrating than enjoyable. I also found the entire sequence where you pilot a mech to be incredibly janky and lame. You would think controlling a gigantic mech would be a fun change of pace... instead I had to avoid enemies because they were all damage sponges and could kill me in a few hits... talk about a major let down... then it all culminated into a lackluster boss fight... Ganondorf was alright. Certainly a steep increase in difficulty compared to the rest of the game (which is essentially a cozy vibe), requiring you to master the flurry attack mechanic. In general, flurry attack felt less reliable to me compared to BOTW which did make this last fight a bit frustrating. I did like the build up to the fight and it was a good call having the final quest be to search for Ganondorf. Where he ends up being makes sense, though it wasn't as obvious for me since I hadn't played the game in months prior. So the details weren't fresh in my mind.

Hetki on jo vierähtänyt siitä kun sain pelin pakettiin, mutta yleensä näin pölyn jo laskeuduttua osaa suhtautua peliin hieman objektiivisemmin. Mahtavan ja yllättävän Breath of the Wildin jälkeen oli vaikea uskoa, että sen suorasta jatko-osasta jaksaisi innostua. Kuitenkin Tears of the Kingdom parantaa Breath of the Wildin kaavaa jokaisella mahdollisella tavalla ja lisää mukaan isoja ja merkittäviä uudistuksia.

Jo ennestään valtavan kokoinen maailma on kasvanut valtavasti moneen suuntaan. Pelin maailmaan on lisäksi tehty merkittäviä pieniä muutoksia sinne tänne, niin että pelaaminen tuntui yllättävän freessiltä ja tutkimisen arvoiselta vaikka jotain tuttujakin elementtejä kartassa oli.

Merkittävin uudistus liittyy pelin rakentelumekaniikoihin ja uusiin kulkuhärveleihin mitä sen myötä pystyy rakentamaan. Edellä mainittu muuttaa pelin peruskaavaa niin fundamentaalisti, että väkisinkin tulee mieleen se oliko Breath of the Wild pelkkä prototyyppi tälle varsinaiselle pelijulkaisulle. Breath of the Wild oli omallakin listalla pitkään kaikkien aikojen paras peli, ja jos nyt ajatellaan BotWin yllätyselementtiä ja uutuuden viehätystä julkaisussaan, niin pakkohan sitäkin peliä on silti edelleen arvostaa. Silti mietin TotKia pelatessa useasti sitä, miksi pelaisin Botwia enää tämän jälkeen. Se kertoo TotKista ehkä jotain.

Teknisesti peli vetää Switchin äärimmilleen, vaikkakaan mitään peli-iloa rikkovaa takeltelua ei tullut itselläni eteen (Switch Oled alustana). Kyseinen rauta huomioiden peli on äärettömän hyvän näköinen ja tekninen taidonnäyte. Joissain tilanteissa tuntuu jopa siltä, että Nintendon devit flexailee mitä kaikkea Switch pystyykään tekemään oikeissa käsissä. Lähes kaikki pelimaailman objektit ovat liikuteltavia ja yhdistettävissä toisiinsa ja sen lisäksi kaikkien mahdollisten objektien yhdistelmät pitäisi toimia fysiikan lakien mukaan. Toisaalta valtavassa pelimaailmassa voit lennellä vapaasti ylös ja alas ilman minkäänlaisia lataustaukoja.

Pelin tarina ja tapahtumat on kasvatettu eeppisiin mittoihin ja painuu itselläni yksiin muistettavimpiin tarinakokonaisuuksiin. Tarina ei ole välttämättä käsikirjoituksellisesti parasta tavaraa mitä tänä vuonnakaan on julkaistu, mutta eeppisyys ja tarinan muistettavuus on omassa luokassaan.

Yhdestä kaikkien aikojen parhaasta pelistä on otettu peruselementit ja parannettu niitä joka osa-alueella. Sekaan on heitetty pieniä ja suuriakin lisämausteita sinne tänne, niin ei siinä voida kauhean pieleen mennä. Tears of the Kingdom on ehdottomasti yksi kaikkien aikojen parhaista peleistä!

Erinomainen 5/5

This is the worst 3d zelda game in my opinion.

The depths are repetitive and just suck the life out of me, they use all the same enemies as above, is just an inverse of the over-world, and are terrible to explore just going from lightroot to lightroot to lightroot to lightroot.....

Skys are literally copy paste all the same launcher, shrine, zoni dispenser and feel barren and lifeless.

It reused the same over world but now has no flow since you just use towers to fly everywhere. There is no reason to run around and you just end up sitting on a zoni device or your paraglider for so much of the exploration, it felt terrible.

The rewards are abysmal, seriously everything cost so much and you get nothing from fighting the same enemies over and over. Also, most the armor over laps in abilities. Yiga and Sheika both do stealth/night speed. Fierce deity/Barbarian both do attack up/stamina. 3 sets give you elemental attacks in certain environments but they don't even keep you from taking damage in those environments. There is no new cool mechanics with the armor, just cosmetic.

Shrines and koroks just like BOTW, which all look the same and are easy to complete, not really fun. I end up just activating the shrine and leaving since they are so boring and repetitive. As soon as they get difficult at all, they end. They needed to make way less but harder and more progressive.

Also the story just using memories in any order takes away the fun or any real time suspense.

Overall worst 3d zelda game in my opinion.

4/10

I could go on even more about the fusing being lame and scrolling across a hundred items to find something to fuse to my arrow over and over.

Also, you just end up using the same flying device late game. Or the lame excuse of “dungeons” in this game that just have you press 5 switches that are easy to do.

I thought this was going to be the best zelda ever with a linear story, real dungeons, and open world and instead we literally got reused boring fusing BOTW.

Tears of the Kingdom is a game that blew me away with its creativity and innovation. It is a game that constantly introduces new gameplay mechanics and uses them in clever and fun ways. I really loved how creative it was; it was genuinely overflowing with gameplay creativity. There were so many different mechanics, from the building, to the time rewinding, to the fusing, and ascending through the ceiling, oddly enough. The way that they utilized all these mechanics in crafting puzzles and exploration situations was amazing, and I was continually surprised and delighted by the experience.

The game also has a beautiful and diverse world to explore, full of secrets and surprises. The game reminded me of Death Stranding at times, because traversing through the world is such a major gameplay element. The ferrying of the Korok to his friend, in particular, always reminded me of Death Stranding. Wouldn’t it have been interesting if they had used the time-travel trope to allow for the community building feature like Death Stranding had? Would be interesting to have encountered other players’ engineering projects as I explored the world!

However, not everything in the game was perfect for me. One area where the game did not connect with me was the story. I know that the Zelda story is a lot of people’s cup of tea, but for me I found the cutscenes in this game to, for the most part, feel somewhat samey. I appreciate the time travel narrative where the story is told out of order, and is focusing for a lot of the game on people in the past, but except for a few characters like the charming Gerudo princess, I didn’t connect with the characters and felt like most of the cutscenes felt overly grandiose, “We, the Sages, pledge ourselves to Raurau…” over and over again.

Despite these flaws, I still think that Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece of game design and one of the best Zelda games ever made. I thought this game was much better than Breath of the Wild, which for me really only was about 3 or maybe 4 stars. I feel like Tears of the Kingdom really added a lot more game systems to explore, so I was just constantly entertained with new things that were happening or new possibilities being shown to me. Breath of the Wild had a sense of exploration, but more focused in on the sense of exploration of space as opposed to exploration of gameplay systems. Another reason that I thought the game was better was that the final boss was actually a challenge. Breath of the Wild had a final boss that, if you approached them after doing the rest of the story, was laughably easy. Tears of the Kingdom learned from this mistake and offered a challenging final scenario that did nearly discourage me, but eventually I mustered my courage and was able to beat it.

I thought Tears of the Kingdom was a really terrific game that was an absolute pleasure to play for the entire 90+ hours it took me to go through the main storyline. It is a game that I will remember for a long time and recommend to anyone who loves adventure games. It is a game that deserves all the praise and awards it has received.

Many years ago, I gave Breath of the Wild a somewhat reluctant 5/5 stars. I enjoyed the game, but I still wasn't as enthralled with it as I wanted to be. It was considered the best game of all-time not only by this website, but also IGN, Edge, and British GQ. But the game grew on me and I had to acknowledge that it had a lot going for it: the impressive physics engine, the multiple collectibles, the fun shrines, the simple but ingenious cooking/crafting system, and most importantly, the ability to climb and glide.

I initially gave TOTK 4/5 stars. I put in maybe 70-80 hours into it and was having fun, but it still felt very same-y. Hyrule hasn't changed much and I felt like Tears of the Kingdom was mostly re-treading the same ground as BOTW.

I came back to the game after a few months of not playing and it, which helped me gain a much deeper appreciation of the game.

First things first, the good new stuff. Fuse is one of the craziest mechanics I've ever used in any game. It's probably the centerpiece of combat in TOTK. It's a great way to utilize melee weapons that you don't have storage space for. For example, I was able to attach a Royal Halberd to my Master Sword, which allowed me to swipe multiple targets at the same time.

The other main thing you'll Fuse are monster parts, which can dramatically increase power. I was able to cheese the final boss by attaching Gibdo Bones (+40 attack) to a Lynel Bow (which fires three arrows at once). You do all sorts of silly fusions such as adding elemental damage to weapons or bombs on arrows.

Ultrahand is the other main new mechanic that you've probably seen online. I haven't made any of the crazy mechs that others have made, but I still had a lot of fun with the mechanic. While I still think that building carts for traversing the overworld seems kind of pointless, it definitely helps a lot with aerial transport. There were a number of shrines where I had to transport the green crystal back to its base. I'd attach fans, rockets, and hot air balloons to platforms and steer them to try and crash land on the destination island. I know I just scratched the surface of this mechanic's potential, but it's such an interesting idea that I would've liked an excuse to build more contraptions.

Ascend doesn't seem like an exciting mechanic at first as it's pretty basic, but I really warmed up to it. While there are some fun puzzles using the mechanic, the main upside is that it just makes traversal much easier. Climbing up large walls is still a chore no matter how much stamina you have, but being able to phase through entire floors will always feel good.

While Hyrule is mostly the same, TOTK introduces two new locations: Sky Islands and The Depths.

The Sky Islands are pretty small compared to the rest of the map, but they do offer a chance to utilize the game's aerial traversal mechanics. You can still find a lot of exciting things up there, mostly a handful of extra shrines, zonai devices, and the exceedingly rare Sage's Wills. The Sky Islands don't feel very integral to the game, but I still spent quite a few hours flying and gliding several miles between islands, fighting Flux Constructs, and finding those rare shrines floating hundreds of miles above the ground.

The Depths are a great idea in concept, but could've been fleshed out a bit more. I didn't explore them very much outside of the necessary main story quests, but when I did, I had an absolute blast. The Depths are creepy and atmospheric and you have to rely on Lightroots and Brightbloom seeds to light the way. Even then, I spent a lot of time running through pitch black illuminated only by the gloom or lights in the distance. It's a very cool and unique feeling that I don't often find in many other games.

My main complaint about The Depths is that it can feel a bit pointless. Without shrines, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to explore. You can find Poes and Zonaite, two new types of currencies, but most of The Depths feel like they could've just been procedurally generated like a Valheim level. I loved exploring The Depths, but I just wish I had more incentive to do so.

The Shrines are still a highlight, just as they were in TOTK. I think I completed almost 90 of them in total. The puzzles are still a lot of fun and mostly pretty easy to figure out. I had to look up how to solve only a handful of them, but the rest felt very satisfying to complete. There are countless moments where something just clicks in your brain and you get to feel like a genius when you understand the puzzle's logic.

I spent about a week or so powering through the final two temples and the last of the main quests and enjoyed every moment of it. Sure, I still have some complaints such as the fact that you now need to do a bunch of dumb side quests to awaken the Great Fairy fountains, but I still had a blast all the way through. I probably could've ended the game much earlier, but I felt underpowered fighting Ganondorf and spent an entire day grinding shrines (and got three extra hearts), scavenging for Sundelions, activating the remaining Sky Towers, and finding the Phantom Armor (which I had to look up).

Even after 150 hours, there are still many shrines I haven't found, side quests I haven't completed, armor I haven't upgraded, and recipes I haven't cooked. Hell, I didn't even get the Autobuild feature until nearly the very end of the game. This game feels absolutely massive and it was a joy to explore and do the numerous things you can find on the map. Part of me wishes it was harder, so I'd actually have an excuse to use the 20+ heart containers I acquired and the dozens and dozens of food I cooked but never ate. Either way, TOTK is a towering accomplishment and well-deserving of the praise it's received. It's an improvement on BOTW and I don't know how the Zelda franchise will out-do this one.

What BotW should've been. I enjoyed BotW to a point, got close to all shrines but didn't have any desire to finished that off. This game however had my enjoying it until I had all shrines, roots, clothes, and Bubbul frogs.

Still has a few core issues that the first game had that are they're inherent to the physics and systems this game is made of which is fine, it's still a fun game. I'll just wait for the next one and hope it's just an innovative.

• An open world with so much to do, without feeling overwhelming or pushy. The things you do actually feel like they matter to gameplay and prepping for a difficult fight or tricky situation usually pays off.
• The new construction system takes a little getting used to, but there is potential to create lots of truly useful junk from motorcycles to airships, and even simple battle robots that chase down enemies.
• The story is simple and clean, and more complex and emotionally involved than the first game. That ending sequence too is buck-wild with a few twists that you might not see coming even if you find all the "memories" before the end of the game.
• The cast of characters are simple and earnest, making it easy to love them or hate them without guilt. And Matt Mercer playing Ganandorf was a fun surprise.
• All the elements you loved from the first game, but more. More freedom. More tricks. More fiery explosions (sometimes on purpose even). You can go up into the sky and deep under the ground. And you can still die instantly if you forget to unequip your bow in a thunderstorm.

It's not perfect. Running around with other characters in your party sounds like a fun idea in a game like this, but the system they use is clunky and under-baked. Some of the game content still feels obtuse and old-school, basically forcing you to look things up online. Some of the Breath of the Wild stuff still in this game feels obsolete, like all the horse stuff (I have an airship now thanks, I don't need to store 15 horses at the stable). But this game truly builds on its predecessor in surprising and deeply enjoyable ways.

The Nintendo Switch has become my favorite console of all time because of games like this. Starting with Breath of the Wild proving you don't need overwhelming computational power to still make a deeply enjoyable experience, and going down to the console grave with Tears of the Kingdom that basically perfected what Breath of the Wild started. Truly a poetic arc. If you are still on the fence I encourage you to join in. Let's celebrate the last 5 years of Nintendo's most boring and most interesting console, where The Legend of Zelda series went truly off the rails.

I am so glad I dodged all the marketing to experience it for myself. It really is amazing how much they kept the core feel of Zelda while introducing so many new elements.

These new runes blow the fuck out of the older runes, to be honest. Ultrahand, letting you just build anything out of nearly everything, led to some insane scenarios and changed how you view every interaction. I built so many dumb things that never should have worked, yet somehow they did. Fuse lets you combine anything with your weapons to create new effects. Shield fuses, especially, were always fun to use, and there was a good variety of arrow fuses too. Weapons felt like, after a while, I just kept making the same stuff using monster parts, rock for mining, or a boss drop. Recall might seem underwhelming at first, but you can actually use it to cheese so many puzzles. I enjoyed using recall the most, and it has to be my favourite one from both games. How did they manage to make the recall range infinite? So many times I dropped something from so high up only to think it was gone forever. Instead, you can just recall it, even if you see a tiny little pixel in the faraway distance, as in dropping something from the sky to the ground below, and you can see it touch. How is this running on the switch while they despawn your Zonai creations if you step 10 metres away? Ascend is a bit more niche, but it is very useful for climbing structures quickly. It works well with recall and for getting out of caves easily. Autobuild I just didn't like as much. While the costs are low if you're missing materials, I really didn't want to farm zonai after a certain point. I would also just rather keep building new stuff than rely on my limited favourites.

While the world may be the same, they really put in a lot of effort to make it fresh, giving off the feeling of being familiar but also alien. Areas where you've been before have changed quite considerably, with caves, wells, and varied monsters. Other towns that were a footnote in BotW become much more expanded here, with dozens of memorable sidequests. The sidequests in this game received the biggest upgrade and fit perfectly within the series. Nearly all of them were a blast to do and much more than your standard collect 10 apples. My particular favourites were the Gazette questline in every stable, the returning boss in the depths, and all the riddle ones. Even the main story quests have been improved with great lead-ups to each dungeon. Zora's main story was easily my favourite. Sadly, the shrine quests suffered a lot. Nearly everyone of them wants you to find the crystal and bring it back to the empty shrine. Most of them are way too simple, with very little to figure out. In BotW, these shrine quests were some of my favourites due to their being cryptic, which really worked to make sure you earned them. In TotK, there are just a few of the cryptic ones that actually require some thinking. Shrines, for the most part, were good and introduced some fun concepts. Except for the "free" shrines where you just get a reward, bring them down a bit. These were usually given after figuring out some puzzle to locate or unlock the shrine. Most of these have been relegated now to "solve the crystal shrine quest," to which they have added way too many. There are still a few free shrines outside of those, but they feel much more earned. The sky islands were pretty close to being my favourite addition. Each archipelago has some new puzzles to figure out and really leans on Zonai equipment. The sense of adventure you get here is only matched by the Great Sea in The Wind Waker. I just really wish there was more to the sky and that they heavily cut down on the crystal quests.

After BotW, you would think the sequel would improve on every front. Unfortunately, there are some terrible new decisions that were made, I assume to cater to people who were dissatisfied with the previous game. While their new "dungeons" for the main story are an improvement overall (setting, music, Zeldaish boss) versus their divine beast counter-parts, the actual design of puzzles suffered a lot. Being able to manipulate the beasts in BotW was something I really liked trying to figure out. In TotK, you can essentially speedrun every one of the 5 or 4 puzzles with very little thought compared to even most shrines. While they tried to make it closer to a traditional Zelda dungeon, I feel like it really is just a sidegrade. Also, in these dungeons, you get a faction ally who will help you with their abilities. You get to keep their ability in terms of a spirit form to accompany you over the entire playthrough. Each one will follow you in this spirit form and require you to go up to them and press A to use the new ability. It's a bit weird with just one of them, but hey, it works. Eventually, they decide to give you all four of them together, and each one has the same button for their ability. Some of them will teleport away from you, or others will poof into you while you're trying to activate another one. During battles, it's even more hectic with no reliable way of figuring out where each member will be since they also like to attack random enemies! I can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea, and I am so glad you can just turn them off. This really feels like a direct fix for people asking for a companion in every 3D Zelda. This is supposed to be the powers replacement, but it was done so much better in BotW. Having them just passively (except Rito) tied to your moveset while having disappointing effects was very much missed here.

I'm still very neutral on the Depths. Once you land on Hyrule and see a gaping chasm, your mind starts to wander to what could be down there. Soon after you get your first main story quest, go down there and explore. At first, it looks pretty interesting given the limited amount of time you spend, and I expected a lot more to come. You then zoom out and realize the map is as large as the entire overworld map. You explore for a few hours down there and start to realize it is pretty empty with not much to do. Sure, each region has a couple of interesting landmarks, but they are few and far between. Don't get me wrong, these landmarks were cool and usually end up in a chest giving you some DLC/Amiibo or a new schematic. In between all this, though, is just tedious busywork. Zonai and poes are the new currencies you will gather down here, with the former dropping off enemies and gem rocks while the latter is just randomly sprawled everywhere, usually in chunks of 10. At least Zonai has a much larger use than poes but poes really feels like it exists because they didn't put something else to entice you down there. When I first saw the poes guy in Lookout Landing, I was expecting some grand search like Twilight Princess, where they would be hidden in certain areas and I would have to find specific ones. Instead, poes are just random fluff you mindlessly pick up to use on various vendors. Unlike the overworld, there are no shrines, koroks, or sidequests (except for 1) to be found down here. There are barely any NPCs, and when you do find one, it's just an enemy. They even decided to reuse the story dungeon bosses down here multiple times! It just reeks of rushed content thrown around to give you a second map. At least the new chasms all over the map were fun to find.

Some minor things now... the tutorial being longer but also omitting some stuff to just force you to do the main story when you have your freedom, kind of sucks but with such a large game, it is easy to forget about. It definitely did contribute to my being a bit sour on the opening. For me, BotW and TotK are all about the journey, not the destination. They may have put more emphasis on the main story here, but anything outside of the four main regions I just did not care for at all.

When I played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I had some issues with it. It was still a Zelda game, and felt close enough that I respected its status as such, but it took me a WHILE to finish that game off. The infamous weapon break mechanics; the VERY hands-off approach to guidance when the game existed on such a large scale open world; the lack of dungeons; heck, even some of the lore details threw me. And while I enjoyed the gameplay well enough, I still put it down and didn't return for YEARS, just in time to complete the story for this game.

Now that it's here, I can say Tears of the Kingdom has accomplished something Breath of the Wild was never able to do: make me spontaneously say, "My god, I love this game!"

BotW did some fun things with physics, and allowed you to innovate in terms of tactics and strategy when fighting monsters. Tears manages to take that innovation, upscale it to a factor of about x1,000, and really let the players have fun with it. It rewards creativity on a scale that no other Zelda game (and arguably no other game, period) has been able to do.

The return of DUNGEONS after a conspicuous absence in BotW is great, and while I've only played one of them so far, I'm looking forward to more. There's also an expansion of the Hyrule map, but not in terms of the land--instead, there are maps of the sky AND an underground part of Hyrule called the Depths.

Yes, the weapon break mechanic is still here, but at least this time there's a (somewhat flimsy) narrative explanation for it, as well as a reason you don't start off with the Master Sword in this game. Overall I feel there's a little more explanation, and a little more thought put into progression steps in this version of Hyrule, and I feel like it dovetails nicely with a slightly more tutorialized beginning experience of the game.

I feel much more invested in this Zelda game than its predecessor, which I didn't dislike, but with which I had some significant problems. Tears may still have some of those same issues, but has at least presented them in a way that either makes better sense or which simply works better than in BotW. Furthermore, it compensates and takes the positives of BotW and makes them even more fantastical, fun, and rewarding. There's dungeons. There's even more shrines. There's monsters and (ugh) boss fights on the fly. There's the ability to create vehicles, mechs, and contraptions of death and innovation, and I personally can't wait to explore them all, possibly long after I've finished the main story.

I haven't been this excited for a game in a long time.

So far, every second I've played of this game has been live streamed. If you're interested in seeing me flail my way through this challenging, rewarding game, feel free to check out the playlist here on my YouTube channel.