Review — The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
The short version? This is the best game on Nintendo Switch. It’s an incredible behemoth and a must play. More in my review…
A few years ago I played through Breath of the Wild and I thought it was an incredible experience and really loved the fresh take on not just the Zelda formula, but the open-world formula. I loved and enjoyed the new abilities, shrines, and combat, but it was my adventures following the narrative and discovering the world’s mysterious secrets that kept me engaged. When I felt those ran out, I praised the experience I had but considered my love affair with Breath of the Wild to be over as I moved on to other games.
Picking up Tears of the Kingdom, I certainly had my doubts going in. I was on the brink of Open World Fatigue after completing Cyberpunk 2077 and SpiderMan Remastered back to back. Not to mention the elephant in the room, the question we all were wondering: How can they possibly make a sequel to a game that is already a masterpiece? How do you innovate on borderline perfection?
It didn’t take long playing Tears of the Kingdom to have my doubts vanish as I realized that I was playing an impossibly fantastic game. And fantastically addictive. Tears of the Kingdom miraculously resolved gripes I had with Breath of the Wild that I didn’t even know or remember I had, and it adds so many extra meaningful and interesting mechanics, side quests, and whatever else to keep you occupied that it is borderline ridiculous. I cannot express this enough: I have not played a more dense game in my life. On top of this, Tears of the Kingdom takes the cake for “The Best Adventure Game I Have Ever Played.” Easily. Seriously.
Before we unpack all this, I’m telling you right now, if you haven’t picked up this game, I strongly recommend you do. This isn’t Breath of the Wild. Which will sound funny right, it looks the same, uses similar enemies, and has a vastly similar map. But it’s not. I played Breath of the Wild casually and racked up 60 hours in probably 4 months. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Tears of the Kingdom I feverishly played 42 days over 54 days and clocked over 130 hours. Remember, I was about to swear off open-world games. I was hesitant because I didn’t know how they could innovate for a sequel and I didn’t want to just play “more of the Breath of the Wild”. But I have not been able to get enough of this game. Let all that simmer for a minute.
The big question I keep asking myself as I think about that last paragraph is probably also the one you’re asking: What changed to make it so good? Is it the new abilities? The Zonai Devices? The sky islands? What makes Tears of the Kingdom its own thing in comparison to Breath of the Wild?
It’s not a satisfying answer, but it’s all of those things. Bringing it back around to one of my first points. DENSITY. It’s impossible to not interact with the world in a fun way. You see a shrine in the distance, you mark it on your map, and now how will you get to it? Ride a horse? Build a Zonai contraption of your own design. Maybe along the way, you’ll find a cave entrance and detour to fight some baddies and obtain a collectible. Maybe you’ll run across a resident of Hyrule who needs your help and you get derailed for an hour and do that side quest. Maybe there are just some good materials to collect or add to your Hyrule Compendium, animals to hunt, hidden weapon caches to find, a monster camp to overthrow, or a mix of all those things, and by the time you get back to what you’re doing, you’ve practically forgotten why you put down a map marker in the first place. It’s not just that there’s more than Breath of the Wild, it’s that there is MORE, and every bit of the new inclusions is exceptionally fun, completely worth your time, and all make the world feel more alive than ever before. It is not hard to get lost doing interesting little things everywhere you go.
So, suddenly it doesn’t just feel like you’re just pointlessly running from point A to B, or teleporting from point to point to get to your objectives as fast as possible, but you are ADVENTURING from point A to point B. And you’re handsomely rewarded for your curiosity as you do whatever you find most interesting in your travels. A point I really want to get across is that because of the density of the world, you are ALWAYS able to do the thing you find to be the most fun at any given moment. You might turn on your Switch and be in the mood to just go through shrines, great! Maybe along the way, you think it would be more fun to get into some combat, there’s plenty, wanna shift your focus to the sky islands, it’s all you, mainline dungeon, consider it done, build a Zonai machine, go for it. Realistically you’ll constantly be doing a mix of all of these things which keeps the game feeling fresh every time you boot it up.
AAA open worlds these days will practically force you to do some side quests to level up or unlock new abilities or pieces of gear. They’re generally powered by extrinsic motivational forces, and while these forces functionally work by getting you to play the game, and may even be fun in some cases, I don’t believe they’re the most effective way to make players interact with your game. I don’t think this is the case in Tears of the Kingdom, where you might go on side quests with the loot in mind. Or perhaps it’s just a mysterious area that begs to be explored. Maybe you’re looking for a combat challenge. All of these micro-adventures are powered by intrinsic motivation. YOU are the one that decides you want to chase the loot. YOU are the one who decides to explore the mysterious area. YOU are the one seeking a combat challenge. Nothing after the tutorial is required for you to defeat Gannon, meaning you can do anything or nothing in this game. The motivation to do anything comes from purely within, and that style of questing in an open world like this is incredibly refreshing and impossible to disrespect.
Moving on, let’s bring up Breath of the Wild’s biggest discussion as we break into some other game elements. Durability. Yes, it’s still here, but I’d argue it’s not an issue anymore. Before, I was hoarding items like there was no tomorrow. Mmmm Royal Sword with 50 damage? Hylian Shield with 90 defense? Saving those for a boss. Not in Tears of the Kingdom. With the clever fuse system, any sword is a good sword, any shield is a good shield and any bow is a good bow. Especially as the monsters grow in power. Down to a stick? No problem, just drop a white Bokoblin horn from your inventory and fuse it with the stick for a weapon that does upwards of 40 damage. Because monster parts and other high-damage fusible items are stackable as inventory items, it doesn’t matter if you break a good weapon, or have a crappy bow. You have the power at any time to just make a new one. Or experiment with fusing other things! There are so many combinations and unique properties behind materials, it’s a marvelous beauty. This is not even to mention the limitless utilities of messing with fuse combinations and shields?! Or bows that shoot multiple arrows?? The wonder of it all elicits some of the same feelings I had the first time playing through Kirby and the Crystal Shards 64 experiencing the ability combinations there. It’s hard to feel bad about anything breaking when you realize some new combination could be even more exciting around the corner. Experimenting with fuse completely negates the bad feelings that inherently come from the game’s durability system.
The other abilities are just as fun and helpful as well. Using Ultrahand to manipulate objects in this rich physics-based world is incredibly fun. Building your machines is beyond addicting. And to have the ability to save and recall several of your creations with multi-hand? Genius. This not to mention the monstrosities the community is making with their giga-brains proving that the possibilities are virtually endless. There’s a whole other layer of the game just with the Zonai device creations alone.
Rewind is an ability that I slept on too early on. Being able to rewind objects impossibly far away, right back to you is so incredibly helpful and satisfying, not to mention the combat application of returning thrown objects back to sender is funny every time.
Ascent is one I didn’t think was very cool until I was being chased down by those scary-hand fellas. I rounded a corner in fear, which just happened to have a ceiling, so I ascended from there and got completely out of danger. Not to mention the ability to leave caves instantly is way more helpful than it has any right to be paha. Certainly way more useful than I originally gave it credit for.
All in all the abilities really do make Tears of the Kingdom stand out, and after I got comfortable with them I totally forgot about Breath of the Wilds kit. These are superior in just about every way, and help you better interact with the physics of the world way better than before. These combined with the wonders of exploration and the silky smooth combat make for an all-around excellent experience regardless of what trouble you get into wherever you find yourself in Hyrule.
Speaking of wherever in Hyrule, something that completely blew my mind was the depths. Up to the game’s release I tried to stay away from as much promotional material and reviews as possible. All I knew is that we were going “up”. The sky islands were a huge focus in all the marketing I saw. So when I started playing the game and accidentally stumbled into a chasm before any NPC had the chance to explain it to me I was seriously confounded. I sat there freaking out in my living room as I watched Link fall farther… and farther… and farther… until I was in this pitch-blackness that stretched infinitely in all directions. The more I explored the more I understood the scope of it. An entirely new area. The size of Hyrule. Under Hyrule. The depths are excellent. Plenty of end-game enemies and bosses. A completely different damage system. Hordes of interesting cosmetics to collect to make you nostalgic for the older games. Arenas are full of waves of different enemies. Such a cool inclusion to the game. I spent a lot of time down there and enjoyed just about every second of it. Yes, that includes the insanity that was the 6 Lyonel arena, paha.
A large portion of the time you spend in the main quest line is spent locating the descendants of great heroes from ancient times. You help these descendants resolve a problem in their area by visiting a dungeon-type area, the resolution of which helps them increase their power, which allows you to permanently call these descendants to your side as helpful companions. The dungeons themselves are quite simple, as are the bosses you find within them. I certainly found the multiple forms of Gannon in Breath of the Wild to be a little more difficult to handle. But the spectacle of the bosses in these dungeons is spectacular indeed. The battles feel like they have high stakes and are quite cinematic.
Circling back a bit. The companion system has to be one of my only gripes about this game. While they do give Link a whole new kit of conceptually cool abilities to call on a whim, it was often too much of a hassle to bother with. In Breath of the Wild, you could call upon similar abilities much more simply as they just augmented some of your existing skills. In Tears of the Kingdom, if you want to use your companion’s ability, their character model has to be on screen, and you have to typically be close enough to interact with them using (A). So if you want access to all the game’s coolest abilities you have a big posse of characters following you around, and then you have to make sure you interact with the right one, press A, then if you’re chaining a few, walk to the next one, A… It’s a clunky system, so much so that I resorted to just adventuring alone the majority of the time, without the help of these powers (though that didn’t stop me from collecting every Sage’s Will in the game, which is easily one of my favorite loot chases in the game). I think the clunky system is a shame though because the powers are pretty helpful and genuinely cool. But they really should have expanded on the effortless system already in place from Breath of the Wild.
The story this time around is extraordinary. The inciting incident and resulting mystery are immediately captivating (even though it’s got the same foundation as Zelda games always have had haha). As you learn more and more unraveling the mystery it just pulls you in deeper and deeper. I loved how you could even stumble across the main plot points in the world before an NPC had the chance to guide you to those areas, letting the satisfaction of your discovery take you on a dopamine high. Eventually, the story reaches its climax and that moment is beyond unforgettable. You learn about why the game is called Tears of the Kingdom. You think about shedding a tear yourself. It’s incredibly moving and so well thought out and put together. The finale had me yelling in my house and the final sequence of fighting Ganondorf felt so much more satisfying and intense than Breath of the Wilds finale. It’s been about two weeks since I’ve defeated the big bad himself and I still can’t stop thinking about my grand journey through Hyrule, its bombastic last moments, and all the small adventures in between. It’s a gaming experience that will absolutely stick with me for many many years.
Circling back again to the beginning. Density. Despite my massive journey, despite every hour I’ve plugged in, I am nowhere close to completing everything the game has to offer. There are handfuls of shrines that I still haven’t done. Quests I still haven’t completed. Lightroots I haven’t activated. Areas I haven’t seen or explored. I’d guess there’s probably at least a hundred hours more. It gnaws on me, begging me to come back and play more. I definitely will. Right now I’m just enjoying the euphoria of the journey I initially took, and all the fun I had with it. I did start to burn myself out at the end but I think that was more from my anxiety to play more of my backlog than anything else. Unlike Breath of the Wild, I am excited to play more Tears of the Kingdom when I’m ready to set aside more time for it, whenever possible. After 130 hours that is a major victory that very very few games have been able to do for me. Especially single-player games that have no multiplayer component.
Ultimately, taking all of my thoughts and distilling them down into as short a statement as I can make: This is the best game on the Nintendo Switch. There is a massive amount of games on Switch because of how long the console has been alive and I am telling you right now, Tears of the Kingdom outshines every last one. Better than Mario Odyssey. Better than Smash Ultimate. Better than the other first-party games, and anything else on the eShop. There is no contest. Tears of the Kingdom is the greatest piece of software you can put on your Switch, and I genuinely think you’re missing out if you don’t experience it. It is that good. It is a must-play. I don’t think there will be a proper contender until some years after Nintendo’s next hardware advancement. I’m telling you this is Nintendo’s best game. One of the best games of all time. I believe that statement is completely true, as it is a masterpiece through and through, a 10/10, and an absolute wonder of a game.
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Originally published 18 July 2023 at https://www.backloggd.com.