THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

Nintendo (and social media at large) hyped Tears of the Kingdom up as being even bigger, better, and more essential than its direct predecessor, Breath of the Wild - and somehow, it actually is. While fans who disliked the direction that Breath of the Wild took will probably not be as keen on this installment either, those who did enjoy it will find Tears of the Kingdom to be immensely satisfying.

If you skipped out on playing Breath of the Wild, fear not, because you can jump straight into this game without experiencing any of the previous game’s story. But it’s important to describe its gameplay, so you know exactly what you’re getting into. Breath of the Wild was the first open-world Zelda game, a bold new direction for the franchise, one which was widely praised but remained divisive among some players in the fanbase. Taking cues from the very first Zelda game, released on the NES decades ago, you start in the Great Plateau, a condensed tutorial ‘level’, and upon completing it, you’re free to explore the sprawling kingdom of Hyrule in whichever manner you wish. Of course, you are given a few nudges in what direction you should go if you’re overwhelmed, but you’re more than welcome to just ignore them and go straight to more dangerous areas, or even head directly to the final boss himself. Along the way, you’ll make recipes, take on sidequests, complete shrines, fill out your map, collect korok seeds, gain special abilities, don new clothing, steal weapons from enemies, and a whole lot more. The game is just overflowing with things to do! So it’s even more impressive that Tears of the Kingdom is able to blow Breath of the Wild’s adventure out of the water.

TOTK starts out similarly to BOTW, in that after a short scripted exploration of a cave, where Zelda is whisked away by an unknown force and Link ends up with a new magical arm, you set out on your journey by completing a self-contained tutorial level. Unlike BOTW, however, this starting area is set on floating islands high in the sky, so far above the ground below that losing your footing will end with you dying from fall damage. By completing these early shrines, you’ll gain access to this game’s new, exclusive abilities - all of which have a dramatic impact on the gameplay. The first is recall, which lets you rewind an object in time, meaning you can send boulders rolling back uphill to crush your enemies, or ride a fallen stone upwards to the sky island it fell from. Next up is fuse, which lets you combine two items together to make something new. It’s fun to fuse different items to weapons, making them stronger or even giving them bonus effects, such as elemental magic. Then there’s ascend, which lets you rise through ceilings above you, granted they’re within a certain distance and their surface is flat. This is an extremely useful ability when you’re exploring one of the hundreds of caves or wells in the world. And lastly, and perhaps most controversial among these abilities before launch, is ultrahand, which lets you stick multiple objects together to create all sorts of things, from vehicles to massively destructive weapons. While many jokes about this mechanic being akin to the very underwhelming Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, in my experience, neither this ability nor any of the others broke the game, and it was even fun to experiment with all the options at your disposal.

Once you’ve mastered those abilities, you’re free to explore Hyrule in any way you desire, but the game does give you some hints as to what you should attempt next. There are two major main quest lines to follow - finding ‘tears’ that contain memories by visiting geoglyphs, and freeing Hyrule’s people from dangerous weather phenomena by completing dungeons. Yep, that’s right, the developers listened to feedback from fans about how underwhelming the dungeons in BOTW were, and gave us real dungeons again. Without getting into spoiler territory, I want to say that the plot for this game made me way more emotional than it had any right to. You’ll most definitely find all the geoglyphs out of order, as is intentional, and as you slowly watch the missing Zelda’s memories and piece together what happened, you’ll probably be on the edge of your seat to find the remaining ones. It’s a moving story (at least in my opinion) and the reward you get for finishing them is more than worth it. As for the dungeon questline, they ended up being some of my favorite parts of the game. The characters you’ll encounter, most of them returning from BOTW as well as a couple notable newcomers, are charming and likable. Just reaching the temple itself is a perilous task in itself, but you’ll be accompanied by an NPC who will fight alongside you and offer you their powers to overcome obstacles. The temples are challenging and much more entertaining than the divine beasts in BOTW, and had me scratching my head at moments without being frustrating. The bosses are overall great fun, but one of the absolute highlights from the game was the fight against the Wind Temple’s boss, one that was epic in every meaning of the world, and featured one of the most thrilling and nostalgic pieces of music in the franchise’s history.

If you’re trying to 100% the entire game, be prepared to be playing for a long time - even longer than you played BOTW. Besides the returning Koroks (there’s even more of them now!), over 100 sidequests, and new ‘side adventures’ which are more complex optional tasks, there are now three maps to explore. Firstly, Hyrule is just as massive as it was in BOTW, but don’t expect this to be an all-too familiar retread. In the years since Ganon’s defeat, the land has changed, with new settlements popping up, new landmarks, and altered environments. The world feels much more lived-in now, as well, with NPCs having daily routines, and being found not just in villages but openly wandering the kingdom, sometimes fighting off enemies themselves. As mentioned earlier, there’s also sky islands hanging high above Hyrule that host a bunch of secrets just waiting to be discovered. However, while there are some pretty cool things to do up there, overall they’re not too varied, and feel a bit same-y. Thankfully, the islands are relatively spaced out, so you won’t be spending as much time in the sky as you would on the ground. And beneath the ground, there’s a whole new world waiting to be explored - that of the depths. Down here, it’s pitch black, and you can only tell where you are by using glowing items or clothing to light your way, or by accessing light roots that brighten up the surrounding areas. Even scarier, the depths are consumed by gloom, a dangerous substance that powers strong enemies and saps away your health when you touch it - and you can’t restore that health again until you drink an elixir or find a lightroot! The depths are just as massive as aboveground, and be prepared to stock up on items before questing down there to find powerful weapons!

This is all just scratching the surface of Tears of the Kingdom - but I want to close out this review by addressing some of the quality of life changes that this game made over BOTW. For one thing, weapon durability has been improved, and by fusing resources with them, you can make them last even longer, in addition to dealing more damage. Rain still makes climbing walls an exercise in frustration, but the addition of an outfit and elixirs that help you climb slippery surfaces, the ascend ability also negates some of the usage of climbing, making it much less annoying. The minimap now includes coordinates, featuring not just latitude and longitude but also altitude, which make it much easier to remember and share with friends where a specific secret is located. The only quality of life change I desperately wished for was for a way to better organize your materials. The game lets you sort materials by recency and by categories, but not all of the material placements make sense. For example, to start a fire you need flint and wood, but flint isn’t placed near the wood or with any of the ores, but near monster parts. Why? When you fuse items to an arrow, it also lets you arrange materials by most used and most powerful, but that still may require quite a fair bit of scrolling to find the specific one you want, though. The other complaint I have is that there are so many different buttons that do different things, and multiple menus, that you’ll often forget which does which and make a mistake.

There are a couple other things that were mildly annoying - for example, a set of side adventures you need to finish to be able to upgrade your clothing items is a bit too long in the tooth to get such an essential ability - but otherwise, I don’t really have any other criticisms for this game. TOTK is a gorgeous, thrilling game with so much to do, and it very rarely grows old. I’m 300 hours into my save file, and have yet to reach 100% completion, but am having a blast just exploring. If you enjoyed Breath of the Wild, you’ll absolutely have a great time here.

Final Rating: 10