Tears of the Kingdom is good. Breath of the Wild is better. There, I said it.

Sequels always struggle to move out of the shadow of their predecessors and TOTK is a bold attempt to remove itself that ultimately falls short. Not to sound too negative, there are a lot of cool and unique things going on in Hyrule during Link’s latest adventure, but there are a lot of niggling issues and stumbling blocks that TOTK smashes face first into and one can’t help but wonder how such easily dodged obstacles managed to impede anything at all.

Let’s start things off on the good foot, TOTK looks and performs well for the limitations of the Switch. I was concerned that the aging old faithful console would start to show just how long it’s been around but here it is looking just as good as ever with even more on its plate. Hyrule may be a copy-paste job with a bit of flair, but those additions didn’t slow the Switch down at all. The new enemy and armor designs are fantastic, I especially like the insect revival of the Gibdo, and the autumnal vibes of the sky islands.

Beyond the looks the story is significantly better than BOTWs scanty, threadbare plot. This is, perhaps, the biggest leg up that TOTK gets over its predecessor. Granted, we’ve now spent time with members of the returning cast already, so it has less development work to do for itself, still TOTK utilizes its characters and has a more nuanced plot. BOTW introduced us to a crumbling and fallen version of Hyrule but it never really engaged with what that meant and why that was, Calamity Ganon was more akin to a force of nature than a traditional antagonist and the four Divine Beast pilots barely develop into being caricatures let alone characters.

TOTK is marginally better with the characters, the moments you spend with them and the quests you help them through are more involved and show who they are a little better, though they are still rather simple at the end of the day. Where TOTK really shines is the overall plot, the time travel, the personal sacrifice, the greed and the darkness. We have been treated, here, to the greatest version of Ganondorf that has ever graced a Zelda title, radiating menace and threat with every move, every word. The cutscenes are short but they get the story across well, even if it can be predictable, it is always entertaining. (That said, Mineru’s character and her inflated importance to the plot is kind of mind boggling, I could not bring myself to care about a character that pops up twice in memories and once out of nowhere for a temple…)

My only gripe being that the voice acting is still a bit wanting, it’s serviceable but none of the performances are particularly memorable. At least, not with the English cast. If you want Ganondorf to put the fear of God into you it may require the Japanese VA. Brilliant performance. No shade at Matt Mercer, but the Japanese VA sounds like Ganondorf where the English VA sounds like Matt Mercer playing a bad guy this week. It’s good, but it’s a little too noticeable for me.

New additions to TOTK are, of course, the star of the game. The much-lauded crafting system is simple enough to be quickly understood and puzzle solving flows naturally from it while being complex enough to reward experimentation. Whether you’re making a video of a funny man made of boards shooting fire out of his log and time bombs (RIP Jeremy, if you know, you know) or a vehicle to soar through the skies, it’s an excellent addition. It can be a little cumbersome at times when you’re trying to be precise with angles or when the physics don’t co-operate with your vision but it works more often than not.

The next thing that really amps up the creativity is the Zonai devices. Little gacha capsules with machines you can use to build out your creative visions. Being able to pop a rocket out of your backpack to glue it to your shield for a big boost into the air or to glue it to a platform or wing device to get a quick launch is fantastic. These little capsules make traversal and creativity easy.

As much as TOTK focused on Sky Islands, which are honestly kind of underwhelming in the grand scheme of the game, the real MVP is the Depths. Where the Sky Islands operate as little puzzles and treasures in the air that you traverse with your glider and your Zonai devices, the Depths are full of dread and fear. A pitch-black abyss that you must carefully navigate, looking for light roots to illuminate the shadows and help with traversal. The eerie atmosphere, the dust particulate, the alien insects and the ever-present gloomy sludge make the Depths the best part of the game and it’s not even close.

Of course, the overworld is mainly the same as before. There are some cosmetic changes, bits of rocks and fallen Sky Islands that have cratered into Hyrule, but it looks and feels almost too similar. Truthfully, not enough has been done with it and one could be forgiven if they forgot which Zelda they were playing while roaming the field. Unless you’re on a device, if you’re walking or riding a horse through Hyrule, there is nothing really stellar about the overworld this time around, it’s a retread that’s rather disappointing given the spectacular Depths and it makes the Sky Islands feel as if they were too small an addition to make up for the copy-paste they hover over.

On that note, there are a few resurfacing issues that hindered BOTW that make a return in TOTK, only this time they’re rather glaring because they had a game to build off and weren’t blazing a new trail. The cooking system is still tedious, menu-ing every time you want to make a dish is cumbersome, the side quests are somewhat improved but still bogged down with too many “please fetch me 10 -insert regional item-“ time wasters, and doubling down on weapon durability is a serious thorn in my side.

I understand that some people like the durability system, I still have no idea why you would, but honestly the best take on it I’ve seen is that nobody really wants durability in their games they just retroactively defend it in a game that they enjoy. As much as things come down to personal taste, mine is such that I would prefer to have a sword that doesn’t snap in half every third combo. I would rather not worry about whether a combat encounter is going to be worth my time and resources to even do because I know I’ll lose several weapons to clear out a camp for 20 rupees or some nonsense and it’s just better off not to engage. Before you know it, you’re sitting on a pile of worthless weapons that you don’t want to use in case you need them, but you never need them because you’re avoiding combat to preserve your weapons. It’s a real stinker and nobody will change my mind, it sucks. Also, slippery when wet surfaces are not fun and you’re lying to yourself and me if you try to insist otherwise and yes I know there’s an armor set that helps with that but at that point why even bother with the mechanic.

The combat system itself, while we’re on that note, is still mundane. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just kind of there. Zelda’s Z-Target style combat has long been surpassed by superior systems, but TOTK seems happy to languish behind, making no changes after BOTW and serving up the same grey slop. Granted the new weapon Fusion power makes things a bit more interesting it’s still, fundamentally, bland.

Speaking of Fusion, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. It’s cool to tape two spears together to get a long (super brittle) stick, or to strap a bomb to your shield and use it launch into the air and rain hellfire in bullet time with your bow. To stick an eye on an arrow so it doesn’t miss is a fantastic idea! But you need to do this every. Single. Time. You. Shoot. It’s an insane design choice, it’s cumbersome and it really breaks up the flow of combat.

On top of that the fusion menu itself is far too bloated to be helpful. The idea that every item in your inventory can be fused to an arrow or a shield is neat but 90% of the items do nothing unique. It would have been far better to have a FEW items focused on damage buffs and then the more unique items like puff shrooms, fire and ice fruit, and bomb flowers and so on. There are far too many items on that line and sorting is a good option only when you use items a lot, for more situational items you can find yourself in a paused combat situation for what feels like forever while you scroll to the attachment you want. It’s baffling that this is the “solution” they settled on.

The controls are also still a bit messy, too many buttons are pulling double duty and complicated combinations to achieve simple things like shield surfing are still annoying. Sure, BOTW did it too, but TOTK didn’t learn from it. Many may say that holding ZL, pressing A, pressing X and releasing A, is a simple combination since they’re now accustomed to it but honestly, it’s nuts that you had to get that far. Or when you’re creeping up to pick up a fairy or a rare bug and you start to mash A a little bit to make sure you get it before it can get away, only one of your sage spirits gets a little too close and you activate an ability and watch your prey flee or get obliterated. It’s sloppy.

Finally, the Ganondorf fight is equal parts epic and annoying. What tremendous stakes, after you slip through the gloom to duke it out in the ultimate showdown. What a let down when you’re stuck flurry rushing and parrying for a few moments before being launched into the sky to fight a more cinematic version of the big pig from BOTW. It all looks nice, but it’s not much fun with such a sloppy combat system.

So, I made a pretty wild claim at the opening of my review and now that I’ve aired most of my grievances and praise I’d like to explain why I believe BOTW is the superior experience. When BOTW hit it was like nothing before it, it was a bold new direction for Zelda that nobody had imagined. It wasn’t the dark and gritty realism people have demanded from the series, it was a bold new look at what the series could represent, what it was capable of. It wasn’t perfect, but it blazed a new trail. TOTK has done none of this. Gluing a few boards together is a cool new mechanic, don’t get me wrong, but I think there’s a lot to be said for what BOTW did first to enable TOTK to progress. I lay all TOTKs success at BOTWs feet. BOTW walked so TOTK could… jog?

Because, you see, TOTK doesn’t really “run”, per se. It’s too much the same, it’s the son that looks exactly like the father but for an emo haircut. There is a massive time gap between these games and the only thing to show for it is the admittedly super cool Depths and gluing logs together. I’m not much of a sandbox guy, so maybe this falls flat for me, but I have more fun seeing the wild and silly things that people are making in TOTK than making anything myself because I’m here to play Zelda and I’m an old head, so Zelda has a very different meaning to me than it does to most others these days. And that’s fine, I’m not trying to gatekeep, but in my eyes BOTW will always be the superior of the two and in the same breath I’ll tell you that ALTTP is still the best anyways so who cares?

I can’t help but think back on Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. Granted, game development is significantly more intensive and complicated these days than it was back then but think about the turn around there and how different those games are while still sharing the same skeleton. I can’t help but wonder that BOTWs Majora’s Mask would have been like because instead of something building on top of it into something new and unique, we have something that didn’t really move the needle at all.

Anyways, it’s time to wrap this up. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a strange little experiment, it’s both inventive and safe, too similar and yet wildly different, if it had leaned into its strengths, if had pushed beyond into new boundaries it may have been greater. Cause that’s the catch with following in the footsteps of others. Your shoe prints may have a unique tread but they get muddled up on the road most travelled.

In case anyone was wondering, Nintendo's still got it. Actually that may be an understatement. At one point late in Tears of the Kingdom's main story I thought to myself that it was probably going to be my favorite Zelda game, and then it somehow got even better. It’s an extremely addictive, exciting, enjoyable game that’s absolutely stuffed with fun, intuitive game design.

The flashiest addition to the formula is Link's new ability to physically connect certain kinds of materials and special-powered components together, allowing the player to construct entire large mechanisms and structures, as well as simple vehicles. Building has loads of applications, and while I can't say I used it much when randomly roaming the open world, it was a blast in more small-scale puzzle situations in shrines and dungeons, and in unique traversal challenges. It's a natural fit for Breath of the Wild's physics simulation that massively expands the possibilities for experimentation and fun within that simulation.

Traversal in general is really fun, not just because you can build vehicles, but also because of a super fun ability to ascend through any relatively flat surface above Link's head. This is a game-changer in terms of how you take in what's in front of you and decide how to get over it, and both the open world and more small-scale areas are well-designed to make fun use of this mechanic. As it was in Breath of the Wild, the world is so thoughtfully laid out to always have something drawing your attention, but never revealing an overwhelming amount of points of interest.

Link can also fuse a range of items to his weapons, shields, and arrows, which creates really interesting interactions with the world and with his foes. This combined with the cooking system returning from Breath of the Wild really made collecting resources and crafting a lot of fun. Those are not design ideas that I usually like, but here it really felt like it meant something, and from the beginning of the game up to the final boss I always felt like it was a relevant part of the challenge that deserved my attention. (And made things like bow combat way more fun!)

The game's greatest accomplishment may just be how all of its elements work together for an endless natural flow from one activity to the next. Different regions of Hyrule and the places above and below them contain a range of resources that each are useful somewhere else on the map. Head to the icy mountains to get something to help withstand extreme heat. Take to the skies to find something that will help you in the darkness below ground. Anywhere you go, collect important upgrades and building materials that have potential to be relevant at some point later on—and it probably will be later on because you'll find fun distractions on the way. Gliding and ascending are such a natural fit for the highly vertical world layout, too. Almost everything seems to take just the right amount of time, so I never really got bored or tired of the game.

But it wasn't enough for Tears of the Kingdom's dev team to create an amazing sandbox full of little challenges. The game also has an excellent main questline, whose story and challenges are surprisingly exciting and core to this otherwise open-ended experience. The backstory you slowly come to learn has probably some of the most touching stuff you'll find in a Zelda game, and is really fascinating for the Zelda lore-heads out there. While some early/midgame story quests that may be completed in any order have some minor issues with repetition and pacing, the majority makes up some of the best content in the game.

There are of course a few minor issues here and there. While most of the crafting and building stuff is pretty intuitive, it can definitely be cumbersome both when doing it through menus and when manipulating 3D objects out in the world. Particle effects and complex builds definitely drag the framerate down in an ugly way. The game's insistence on full open-endedness after a point means you may still be running into basic tutorials and mechanics after dozens of hours, or that you may not find some of them at all. And like many open-ended games, I think some players will struggle to arrive at Why This Is So Fun depending on their approach to the world and its many objectives—but luckily the starting area does a pretty good job setting it all up.

Despite those and a few other issues, this is a pure triumph of video-gamey video game design packed with character, charm, mystery, challenge, and crazy ideas. Many times I asked myself “Was I supposed to be able to do that???” and I eventually realized the answer is yes every time—it’s just that well-designed and thought out in how it lets you play around with its different systems. Zelda may be outclassed by other games in some individual areas, but even as a sequel with heavy expectations stuck on an underpowered console, this is still one of the most enjoyable games ever made.

This is a very polished expansion pac that puts a fresh coat of paint over Breath of the Wild and adds a disappointing amount of new features. Ultimately, while this is still a good game, it was an extremely safe follow-up that does less interesting things than nintendo's last Zelda direct sequel, Majora's Mask. That isn't to say there isn't a lot of value or entertainment here. Far from it. I have put close to 100 hours and still haven't beaten the game. I probably won't either, mostly because I finally got burned out.

The biggest change from the original is in the abilities. Gone are all the previous powers and instead we have an ability to pick up and make objects, fuse any two weapons/objects together and oddly the ability to travel through a ceiling. While the last ability certainly has it's utility, it's the least utilized and least thematically consistent power. At least the fuse and build abilities have a clear connective tissue. The build ability is clearly the biggest draw and for good reason. If you've been on Youtube at least once in the past two months you've probably seen a trove of videos highlighting this feature. It can feel satisfying to solve a puzzle by building an object or vehicle, let alone use this feature to travel around the world map in style. Of course, the downside is there is almost always an optimal and simple way to build a vehicle to get around efficiently. This optimization doesn't prohibit you from fucking around and making a giant robot with a rotating phallic object attached to it. To each their own.

I will say the fuse ability is quite limited and disappointing in contrast to the build function. Sure you can fuse almost any object with a weapon or shield, but there are sparse interesting interactions with the system. At best you can make either a shield with a single use rocket to get to a higher elevation (which is rad mind you) or make your shield into a skateboard (again rad). Other than that, you haphazardly glue random objects to your weapon and get some extra damage. To be fair, you can argue that rocks allow you to smash certain objects, so I guess there's a third interesting interaction... but this certainly feels like a half-baked mechanic. Especially when you weigh it against the infinite options and creativity behind the build function.

Regardless, the tools they give you allow for a lot of expression and creativity in the big sandbox that they made. Monsters and animals in the world map have emergent mechanics, such as hunting prey or interacting with objects in the world which helps breath life into the otherwise monotonous world. Unfortunately, a lot of Tears of The Kingdom feels like automatically generated content. This is because a lot of Breath of the Wild was copy and pasted over and that world had the same issue...There are certainly hand sculpted assets, such as the towns, shrines or temples, but what's most disappointing about these are how a lot of these assets are carried over from Breath of The Wild... sure they may add some coat of paint, whether that's snow for the Ritos or oil for the Zoras but it is fairly superfluous. You can argue that they added the "Depths" and "Sky Islands" but I personally found both new biomes to be disappointingly empty... Sure they will have shrines and enemies and temples are located in these biomes... but overall it's just a whole lot of emptiness with pockets of content.

The shrines are newly designed, but ultimately indistinguishable from each other. This is because they all use the same assets and look aesthetically identical. I will say there were plenty of shrines that were satisfying to solve, but they still had clearly half-assed ones where you enter and walk to the end of the corridor to complete it... there's also the issue with how clinical and compartmentalized these shrines feel. I don't recall a shrine that required multiple types of puzzles to complete. Typically there's a theme to the puzzles in a given shrine that gets progressively more complicated as you progress. This isn't bad design by any stretch but it does prevent the shrines from ever feeling intricate since they each seem to only play with one idea.

I haven't completed all the temples as of writing this review, but I did like both the Wind Temple and Fire Temple. Neither is a series high point (I plan to beat the other two so perhaps they were the better temples?) but I did find them more enjoyable and varied compared to the temples in BoTW. They at least had distinguished themes and unique boss encounters. Well sort of unique... I did encounter the Wind Temple boss while randomly exploring in the depths... but it's a fun fight so I didn't mind too much.

What's primarily disappointing, aside from the copy-pasted Hyrule, is how they didn't fix any flaws with the first game. Combat is still relatively simplistic, though they give you plenty of tools to play with. There is a disappointing lack of variety in enemy types. Sure you have multiple tiers of Moblins and the likes, but this is only surface level... they have a different color, take more damage to kill and hit harder... it would have been great to see the behavior and tactics change as the Moblins got more powerful rather than the lazy artificial difficulty spike of tweaking numbers... they do add new enemies, such as the bubblfrogs or Horriblin and new mini-bosses but the enemy variety still lacks significantly given the size of the world. Contrast this to Elden Ring which has exponentially more enemy variety and typically has more care and thought behind the types of enemies you encounter given the biome and location... I also don't enjoy the cooking/crafting system (I like the "build" mechanic to clarify). It's just so clunky maneuvering through a giant list of items to find what you want... this gets worse in combat while using "fuse" with arrows. It's cool that you can buff your arrows, but man it's so awkward and tedious to select the correct object, particularly towards the end of the game. Also the lack of temples is disappointing. You can argue that there are a ton of mini-dungeons in the form of shrines, but my main issue with those was how narrow the puzzles were, since they typically only focused on one theme rather than build upon multiple like the best of the Zelda Dungeons. As mentioned earlier, I did appreciate the higher quality of the Temples they included.

Now the biggest flaw... the plot... O God.. it's so horrible. I thought BOTW had a bad plot but then Nintendo glibly said "hold my beer." The game is literally the same plot as BOTW just significantly more convoluted. Another even older civilization ruled Hyrule before the events... at least in BOTW there was a clear connection between Link and the old world since he was part of those events... this "new" ancient civilization feels hollow. The only positive thing I can say about it is it introduced a new species to the Zelda world, albeit already extinct. All the characters you need to interact with as part of the main plot are as cringey as their counterparts from the first game. You would think these characters would have matured and became less annoying between the games... but no. While Nintendo has never been known for good storytelling, I would be willing to give the gibberish and asinine plot a pass if it wasn't shoved in my face so often. To be fair, you can skip cut scenes which is a most welcomed feature.

Overall, if you liked the gameplay and world of BOTW you will have a great time here. I did. I would just recommend not playing BOTW right before starting TOTK mostly because of the amount of recycled assets... it's not as noticeable if you haven't played BOTW in 5-6 years (which was the case for me).

Tears of the Kingdom is not a game without precedent in the Zelda series. Other games, such as Majora's Mask, have repurposed the engine and assets of a previous game to great effect. Heck, it's not even the first time that Nintendo EPD has given new life to an old version of Hyrule through the introduction of inventive new mechanics (See: A Link Between Worlds). Because of this, I was never worried about this game's capacity to live up to its expectations. After all, Zelda is a franchise that has mastered the art of iterating upon itself, and Breath of the Wild's back-to-basics reinvention of the series is an exception rather than the norm.

And yeah, I wasn't disappointed. If Breath of the Wild was a scenic stroll through the woods, Tears of the Kingdom is more akin to a ginormous buffet of adventures and puzzles. It's so huge that it took me over 100 hours to reach the end credits, and I still have a plethora of things beckoning me to return to the game.

Admittedly, I got a lot of déjà vu in the game's opening hours; the core mechanics of the game are largely the same as its predecessor. You explore the world of Hyrule and discover shrines for fast-travel, along with Korok Seeds that expand your inventory. The weapon durability, cooking, survival and heart/stamina upgrade systems all remain, and the story's main objectives are again designed so they can be tackled in any order. Much like in Breath of the Wild, you also spend the game's opening hours in a self-contained area that eases you into the mechanics.

It's not until I spent some time in Hyrule's overworld that I thought the game set itself apart. This updated version of Hyrule is chock full of NPCs to interact with, caves to explore and puzzles to solve. Breath of the Wild was insanely fun because getting from A to B felt like an adventure where you made delightful little discoveries along the way. But in Tears of the Kingdom, the discoveries you make are so captivating that you forget what your original point B even was. It's truly overwhelming.

The centerpiece of Tears is undoubtedly Ultrahand, a new ability which allows you to manipulate objects and glue them together as you please. This takes the physics-based puzzling that was introduced in Breath of the Wild to an entirely new level. You'll constantly be running into tasks that don't just allow for creativity--they demand it. The thrill of conceiving a wild idea for a structure or vehicle, and after a string of failures, finally making it work, is an undeniably gratifying experience.

Another defining pillar of the game is the Fuse ability. In Breath of the Wild, the weapon durability system turned weapons into disposable items that kept you scavenging for upgrades at every moment. In Tears of the Kingdom, you'll very rarely find worthwhile weapons by themselves in the overworld. Instead, you are expected to "craft" them by using the Fuse ability to combine base weapons, such as sticks, to monster parts. This system allows for a ridiculous amount of combinations, and it keeps combat pretty fresh through the game. Many combos are useless, but the beauty of the system is that it allows you to be creative and experiment to find out what combinations work best for your playstyle.

The other two abilities, Ascend and Recall, lie more closely in the quality of life space. Ascend is a clever ability that lets you travel upwards through solid objects, serving as an inventive way to reach higher ground. There were several times that I found myself hopelessly stuck, only to realize I could use Ascend to reach a new area. Recall allows you to rewind time on specific objects, turning it into a perfect "undo" button for any Ultrahand mishaps.

You still are tasked with investigating four corners of Hyrule in quests that lead you to the game's dungeons. The questlines preceding the dungeons in this game are considerably more detailed, providing more story, character development, exploration, and combat. The dungeons themselves, however, didn't quite meet all my expectations. Nintendo certainly took some corrective actions in response to criticisms of Breath of the Wild's Divine Beasts. The dungeons all have unique themes and mechanics, and the wonderful new bosses feel like they were right out of a classic Zelda game. Despite this, some of the dungeons are all still relatively small in scope and all of them echo the structure of the Divine Beasts, which left me quite disappointed. Elden Ring showed that you can have massive, complex dungeons and castles inside of an open world, and I really wish Tears of the Kingdom would have taken a step in that direction.

While Hyrule itself feels pretty fresh, Nintendo also didn't neglect to expand the world with new places to explore. First, there's the Sky Islands, which are not as big of a factor in the game as the pre-release trailers would have you believe. The Sky Islands feel like extensions of the overworld, containing puzzles, Shrines and quests to fulfill. The real big one that Nintendo failed to mention, though, is the massive underground zone called the Depths.

I had a blast exploring the Depths. It has the same fun of discovering what's over the next hill, but takes the wonderous atmosphere of Hyrule and replaces it with a foreboding dread. The zone feels like a massive playground for Ultrahand creations, often requiring you to craft vehicles in order to cross puddles of Gloom, an evil substance that drains your hearts. Part of me does wish the Depths were more fleshed out and integrated with the rest of the game, though, because a lot of it does feel like an entirely optional diversion.

Finally let me touch on the story (No actual plot details, I promise). You do get some more active story and characterization in Hyrule itself, which felt really nice. However, a big slice of the story is still told through the flashback system of Breath of the Wild, which has you searching the world for flashbacks that you can experience out of order. I really liked this system in Breath of the Wild, because the story was written in a way that complimented it. While I liked the overall narrative of the equivalent story in Tears, I found that the non-linear approach actually undermined its impact, and it made me wish it was told in a more linear way that didn't reveal its main twists until the very end.

Breath of the Wild was an incredible game for its day. When I played it, it really felt like every other open world game had been left behind in the dust. In the years since, however, a few other developers have caught up to Nintendo. In fact, even after spending a ton of time with Tears of the Kingdom, I think Elden Ring is still the reigning champion of open world adventure games. That's not to diminish the incredible achievements of Tears of the Kingdom--Ultrahand is an incredible technical marvel, and it's amazing how all of the abilities synergize and work as they do when they would completely break in the hands of any other developer.

Tears of the Kingdom is an incredible game that equals, and in many aspects surpasses, Breath of the Wild. Although there will always be a place for the more grounded and simple Breath of the Wild, as a whole, Tears of the Kingdom is undeniably one of the best Zelda games to date. When I'm playing, most of my nitpicks just fade into the background. While I don't think there's a lot more juice Nintendo can squeeze from this map of Hyrule, I think there's still plenty of room for evolution for the "open air" formula going forward.

Having now finished the game (barring finding the remaining 600 koroks, which I'm sure I'll do in time), I have to say that while I loved my time with it, it does for me fall a little short of my experience with Breath of the Wild. Tears is, in almost every way, a better GAME, and I wish I had the time to really just fuck around with making absurd vehicles and orbital canons. But in the end, I came away from this missing the wonder of BotW. And perhaps that's unfair, but I simply never felt the same need to just get lost in this world as I did the first time around. And the plethora of generally meaningless side quests/adventures didn't help—so much of it felt like busywork and wasn't actually that engaging.

Don't mistake me—the game is incredible, and is easily in my top five of Zelda experiences alongside BotW, Link to the Past, Link Between Worlds, and Wind Waker (I know I'll get shit for not loving Ocarina more, but even at the time, as a kid who grew up with the original two gold carts on the NES, I just could not get past how clunky it felt). But in the end, it never hit the same emotional high as its predecessor. This is maybe most pronounced in the run up to the final boss. Traversing the gloomy depths beneath the castle was more punishing than exciting, and the music and tension of that last fight... None of it, not even the batshit [redacted] fight at the very end, came close to the thrill of ascending Hyrule Castle while the skies gradually turn the colour of apocalypse and the sages light Ganon's ass up with lasers, or Zelda telling you that courage need not be remembered for it is never forgotten right before you battle hatred in its true form.

The sad fact of it is, they wrote more story for this game, but not a better or more emotional story. And at the close, I admit I felt more relieved to be done than thrilled at the prospect of diving back in and finding what more I could uncover. A brilliant game to be sure, but unfortunately, for me, trapped in the shadow of its forebear.

• Year played: 2023
• Platform: Switch
• Playtime: 50+ hours
• Completion level: about 90% of main story
• Overall rating: 7.8 / 10

Deep breath, okay HERE WE GO with my non-perfect rating of Tears of the Kingdom.

I don't really know where to begin? Part of me loves this game. Part of me can't stand it. There are times when I stop and just take in what an incredible job nintendo has done here, and I can barely comprehend how they managed to make this game work at all, let alone on the aging switch hardware. But most of my experience actually playing the game involves repeated cycles of extreme frustration, like I often feel I'm playing it out of spite rather than actual enjoyment.

My issues with this game boil down to three core topics: Shrines, Building mechanics, and Temples.

First, shrines. I absolutely dread walking into a new shrine every time I find one. The puzzles you have to solve are just... not fun. Yeah, I don't know how else to describe it other than that I just have a bad time with them. They're either so trivial that it feels like a waste of time, or so obtuse that I end up banging my head against them until I finally give up and look up the solution online. Maybe I'm just bad at understanding the hints that they try to give you, but I frequently find myself stuck - not because I don't know how to solve the puzzle, but because I don't know what puzzle I'm supposed to be solving to begin with. Either that, or I tried a solution which didn't work, making me think I've got the wrong approach, but it turns out I had the right approach all along but it just wasn't perfectly aligned the first time.

Which brings me to topic two, building mechanics. The star mechanic of the game, which is shoved in everywhere and yet never feels good. Nearly every puzzle in the game is solved by jankily slapping together random objects. Every time I solve a puzzle I'm left saying "I don't think that was how I was supposed to do it, but it worked...", and eventually I realized that this type of "unintended" puzzle-solving is actually very much intended. There are very few puzzles in the game where everything clicks together just right in a satisfying way, it's always jank and slapped-together makeshift solutions, and it makes puzzle-solving just feel unfulfilling to me. I want that moment where it clicks into place perfectly, I don't want to feel like I cheated the game into getting past the puzzle. This is probably pretty divisive, but it's how I feel.

And finally the temples. Dear fucking god the temples, how I absolutely despise them. I'm someone who actually didn't mind the divine beasts in Breath of the Wild, so I'm not totally opposed to a non-traditional dungeon style or anything. But these are just fucking awful. Every single one is exactly the same concept, with 4 or 5 locks of some sort that need to be unlocked in order to progress, which I found to be repetitive and unusually uncreative for such a creative game. There's often no clear path between the different locks, each one is its own separate contained "puzzle"... if you can call it that, because again, there's no clear solution to each puzzle, just a bunch of junk laying around and it's up to you to slap it all together haphazardly until you eventually jank your way to unlock the next lock. I'm currently in my 4th and final temple of the game, the desert one, and I just can't get myself to pick the game back up again because I'm truly not having a good time drudging through these awful temples.

Ok so, I still gave this game a relatively high rating, so there has to be things I like, right? Well yeah - basically all the things I enjoy are the things that were already present in Breath of the Wild. The scenery is gorgeous. The sidequests are full of charm and fun characters. The towns are bustling and full of interest. Exploration is compelling and it's a blast navigating around the map (with the exception of horses - ugh I won't even get into it) and chasing down every point of interest I see in the distance.

The other thing I've been loving is exploring the depths. I think I've almost spent more time there than on the surface right now. Even though it's quite repetitive, I've been having a ton of fun exploring the dark. The core loop of seeing a lightroot in the distance, finding your way to it, and seeing it light up the map is just really, really satisfying and I find myself getting hooked on it for hours at a time.

I've also really enjoyed the addition of the fuse mechanic, which in my opinion is one of the best improvements over BotW's weapon durability problem. Finding bigger and badder monsters to defeat to get new powerful weapon parts is immensely rewarding - even though I find myself dying a lot in the process.

So, overall, this game is just alright for me. It has some parts that draw me in, some parts that push me away, but in the end it's enough to keep me playing for the most part. At this point I'm hating the desert temple enough that I don't know if I'll actually finish the game myself - lately I've been opting to just watch my husband play instead, which has been more enjoyable than playing it sometimes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh well.

For me, desserts are the riskiest consumable. Every other meal, you can justify. "My body needs proteins so I can eat this steak." You never need a steak, but you can justify it because of the nutrients your body needs. But dessert is so blatantly bad for you that you can't justify it. "I'm eating strawberry shortcake because of all the nutrients found inside the strawber-" get outta town. I don't buy that and neither do you. There's no shame in it. We're humans eating strawberry shortcake because strawberry shortcake is delicious. It's a carnal treat. You've been very naughty when you eat strawberry shortcake.

So for me, dessert has to be amazing to be worth it. I'll forget all the calories and trans fats because this ganache is immaculate. But desserts are often not worth it for me. I will very infrequently dive into a dessert; retaining my extra layer of fat on salted snacks alone.

30+ hour main-quest video games are a rarity for me. It may not seem it from my criticism of some shorter games, but those are my preference. I buy mostly little indies now because I know I can dedicate 5 hours to this one game over the next month of my life and not lose the plot. It's the reason I haven't been playing my beloved JRPGs. Those characters got too much going on for me to care throughout the entire year and a half it would take me to finish that game.

If I wanna play a longer game right, I gotta dedicate the time. I gotta commit all my free time to a game until I finish it. And as a person with a roost of family (4 kids, my wife and I, the in laws), I have to sacrifice interpersonally to really play a long game. It maybe happens to me once every two years where a game consumes me. Does my son think it annoying how much I am playing Tears of the Kingdom? Is a moment of me playing this while my daughter is awake worth it? These are the questions that often prevent me from taking those bigger, sweeter gaming bites. I have to know that the game is the thing I want to do at the moment.

The impossibly high bar set for the game is not hyperbole. The last longer game I really invested in was Persona 5 at release. My kids were younger then. I was younger then. There was an energy I had that I don't now. My body is betraying me so I have to be diligent with my time. My body is betraying me so I have to be diligent with my diet. My body is betraying me, and yet- Zelda.

I loved Tears of the Kingdom. I knew I would because I loved Breath of the Wild. Of course I didn't know, but I knew. Never during any trailer did I not think "I'm gunna love this game." I listened to criticism before release and thought "I don't feel that way. This game will be a five outta five."

And I feel like it is a five outta five. It's a masterpiece, and I love it, and I will casually four-drinks-deep at a dinner party say "bro, it's the best. You gotta play Tears of that there Kingdom."

So are my feelings even worth interrogating? I have the most compromised-fan-skulled opinion on God's green earth. I'm the chief among sinners. Who cares what such a wretch as I think?

Me, so here's my thoughts!

Specifically, how does it compare to Breath of the Wild, my (previous?) game of my gahtdang life.

Music

A big complaint about Breath of the Wild is how musically sparse it is. I disagree. I like the atmosphere, and the occasional trilling of the piano is beautiful and significant. I personally wouldn't fiddle with Breath of the Wild's minimal choice.

That being said, I loved all the new music in this game. The musical sting when falling into the depths; the surprising yet welcome horns as you fell Colgera; the triumphant anthems as the game's conclusion nears- The tunes are frequent and fantastic. And it is definitely more.

Gameplay

It comes as no surprised to any reader that has gotten this far: I love swinging a sword in Zelda. I love throwing bombs. I love Gibdos and I love defeating Gibdos. I loved Breath of the Wild because it was Zelda, and it is fun to be Zelda (Link). Breath of the Wild was a step even further in the fantasy freedom that Zelda provided in a self aware context that modern fantasy games like the Witcher seem to miss. You have so many options to have the kind of fun I'm interested in. There were things exclusive to Breath of the Wild that just upped that freedom without becoming unwieldy. The Sheikah abilities allow for traversal and puzzle solving that eclipses the efforts of previous games.

But I do feel that Tears of the Kingdom outdoes even Breath of the Wild. Every Zonai ability just feels built with a sandbox in mind. Think of all the opportunities to use Ascend. Now think of all the ways you can use it in conjunction when you can use Masterhand to build platforms above you. They made the expansiveness of building games accessible and attractive to those who have never played the genre. And it still doesn't feel unwieldy. Sure, there's all sorts of exciting things I won't build, but the limiting factor is me- not the game.

The gameplay is the gameplay of my favorite game, just more.

Story

Breath of the Wild's story is a simple one. For some people- too simple. While Breath of the Wild (is/was) my favorite game, the plot was a little too simple for me. The barebones plot complimented the open world, but I wanted some of the intrigue of previous Zelda games.

Tears of the Kingdom comes out swinging with a story that feels ripped out of fantasy novel. The drama is higher. The adventure feels more grand. The emotions feel more earned. There are major story beats that I love (Zelda turns into a dragon), and major story beats that I don't vibe with (Zelda turns back into a Hylian). That being said, I do mostly like the story. There is also certainly more story to enjoy.

Other/Concluding Thoughts

Hyrule is much bigger considering the sky and the depths. There are more quests. There are more recipes to make. More outfits to wear. More powers to gain. More, more, more.

One quick thought on the graphics/performance before I move forward with answering the question of if more is too much- this vision of Hyrule is showing its age on the Switch. There were at least five times while I was diving from Heaven to Hell that the game would stall Link in midair while loading the depths. I can see the pixels of some textures on my OLED Switch screen. While I like the design of Hyrule and I do think it is a miracle that a game this large plays this well on the Switch, I don't think we can do this a third time. I think we have to move beyond the Switch. I'd like the next mainline fresh Zelda in 4K/60fps. Someone tell Furukawa my demands.

We are at the end of our time, but the question of "is this too much" remains. If Breath of the Wild feels like having a piece of pie, Tears of the Kingdom feels like having a slice alamode. It really is gunna come down to the individual if the game is too rich or not.

After beating Breath of the Wild the first time, I went and did everything in the game I could (except get all the Korok seeds as I'm not a sadist). When the DLC came out, I completed every new quest. Once all that was done, I played it all again on Hard. I have been craving more Breath of the Wild.

This is, in the ugliest terms, more Breath of the Wild.

If you've been craving more Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom will satiate that particular desire. If you aren't suffering from my particular sweet tooth, I still think there is a damn fine game waiting for you in Tears of the Kingdom. I just also think you may think some of it is empty calories.

I think I'd describe this as my favorite game.

Did you ever revisit a beloved location but you had to let a companion tag along that made the trip all about them, what they wanted to do, and you had no choice but to keep indulging them, and everything that might have been nostalgic and everything that might have been novel, was completely ruined by this irritant.

That's what TOTK feels like to me. and this is subjective, because if you loved and wanted a build mechanic, the game was probably a blast for you. it's not at all a bad game. but everything is themed around the build mechanic. everything. All puzzles, all travel, all temples, the whole world. I loved BOTW. it was among the best games ever created if not a contender for the best. it's ruined world and exploring it were among my favorite memories of gaming in general, definitely my favorite zelda memories, and zelda is a series I have loved all my life.

The idea of new dungeons, new puzzles, a reason to return to this world and see new depths to it, having actual bosses, ganon be an actual character, it was a dream come. true. It would have been the perfect game. But I hate the build mechanic. I don't enjoy it at all. I didn't want it. and everything is about it. every quest and side activity, navigating at all, needs it. every reward is a reward to use it better. Everything I might have loved about this game is buried under it. there's no point in playing it, I can't escape it.

This is a me problem. It's a good game. But I just don't like the direction. it's a shame. I wanted to get over it. I tried. I suffered through, I tolerated it for dozens of hours. I just wasn't having a good time. I have never said that of any zelda game (well, wand of gamlon doesn't count). I don't know what to do with myself.