Iwata’s dead, Shiggy’s checked out, and there’s no one to tell Aonuma no.

What the fuck is this.

I really shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am. This is the same game. It's the same people who made Breath of the Wild. I loved the first game, but still didn’t pay attention to the hype cycle of this one at all. I guess all the paraphernaleous cultural impact still seeped in somehow.

Remember when people thought there’d be playable Zelda? Fucking lol.

This review is only based on the five (5!) hours it took to get the paraglider, and I gotta say, it only kept making me appreciate the Great Plateau in Breath of the Wild more. The thematic cohesion. The mystery. The framing of how that whole game was going to work in miniature. What my abilities would be, what my relationship to game information would be like, what kinds of emotions I could expect to experience playing that game.

Maybe Tears of the Kingdom is a fine game. Maybe it is every bit as fun to exist in as Breath of the Wild, in theory. But in practice, it won’t be, can’t be. It didn’t start in the wilderness, letting me discover its game essence on my own terms. It started with a prestige-game walking-sim lore dump. A lore dump that ended with a bunch of Hot Anime Nonsense™.

Zelda and Link confronting mummy Ganon was like walking into the mid-season finale of a show that’s already on its second or third season. Except I’ve already played the previous season, and that context did not help me at all! Ganon’s no longer a miasma, but a dude with a voice? And there’s a goat dragon that’s Zelda’s great-great-grand-furry? And the Master Sword’s just useless?

Here’s my beef. All of this is great for trailers and generating “hype” because “hype” is fueled on speculation and curiosity. But the elements that generate hype are not the same as the elements that fuel a sincere emotional connection with a character, story, or world. I’m frustrated because Breath of the Wild knew this so well.

The old man on the Great Plateau was mysterious, but allowed to be goofy. He was generous, but mischievous. You could see him in different contexts, learn about him by exploring his house when he wasn’t around. There was a fun little emotional connection built up by being around him. The twist of his true identity, and the further twist of his ultimate fate, made me feel little pings of emotion. Nothing fancy, but he was the tutorial NPC. He primed me to think, “Oh, this is a game and a game world where it’ll be fun to get invested in people.” And he was the perfect segway into telling me what my mission was, what the stakes were, and why I, the player, should care.

The goat dragon great-great-grand-furry is none of this. We know he’s dead when we first meet him. His dialog makes no sense. There are a ton of slave robots on his little island that he comments with surprise are still running. Did he not program them? Can he not de-program them? Am I supposed to feel something about how he made a race of robot slaves? Are they sentient? I would have rather had signs in the ground Super Mario Style telling me all the tutorial things I needed to know. Because it feels weird for a robot to jovially say “Hey, there are some robots that’ll try to kill you, so, like, don’t feel bad about killing them. Here are some combat tips for killing them!”

And then his sequence at the end of his tutorial level practically screamed to me, “Hey, remember when you felt something at the end of your time with the Old Man in Breath of the Wild? We’re doing the same thing here! Don’t you feel something? Don’t you remember loving that?” And like yeah, I do remember that. And now I’m mad you’re trying to copy your own damn homework without understanding why it worked the first time. I have not built up a relationship with great-great-grand-furry goat dragon. I do not know why he is chill with Zelda. Honestly, all the statues with him and Zelda holding hands at the end of every shrine is weirding me out! Is Link a cuck now?

I want to say this is all superficial, but it’s really not, because everything about my time with Tears of the Kingdom so far felt like it was being led around by the tail. This is a re-skin of Breath of the Wild, but it doesn’t even have the decency to be honest with me. If we’re gonna have shrines, and they’re gonna function exactly the same way, why did you go through the bother of giving them new, thematically incoherent designs. Why do the upgrade orbs need new names, new lore. Changing the shrines’ glowy color from blue/orange to green is a downgrade, actually! Those other colors were a lot easier to see at a distance in a game world that has lots of green!

Jumping ahead of myself for a moment, I knew I was done when I unlocked the first new Shiekah Tower. (You can’t even call them Sheikah Towers anymore, these days!) The emergence of the Sheikah Towers in Breath of the Wild was iconic, cinematic, promising adventure in a changing world. The equivalent cutscene in Tears of the Kingdom felt like getting a homework assignment. Hey, someone you know has already explored the world, had time to build fantastic structures in every corner, and just needs a cable guy to come by and make sure the wiring is up to code! You know, that person who was a 100-year old loli in the last game! Well, now she’s been aged up to guilt-free fuckable waifu status! And she’s super plot relevant! You’ll get to talk to her more than Zelda over the course of the game, probably!

Seriously, that loli was my least favorite part of Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom felt it important to put her loli portrait on her encyclopedia page?? When she will never look like that in this game??? She has the gall to rename Zelda’s magic iPad after herself! I was thinking about her (and taking internal bets as to whether she’d be a waifu or had somehow de-aged even more) hours before I saw her.

ANYWAY. None of what I said so far really matters more than the gameplay. And a Great Plateau 2 this was not.

I was so disappointed with how linear this was. In theory, I understand the concept that led to it existing the way it does. Tears of the Kingdom is a Lego game. It purposefully had sections of little Lego kits structured in a way where pieces from one would not mix with pieces of another and confuse people who have never touched Legos before. But giving kids Lego kits can change the way they interact with Legos. Hell, I remember I thought it was sacrilege when my sisters disassembled my Bionicle to make their own Voltron-esque monstrosities. But to them, who had not, could not, would not read the instructions, their style of play was more intuitive, more pure than mine.

Fundamentally, Tears of the Kingdom was not encouraging me to think for myself, to become resourceful, to seek my own path through things. It was priming me to expect that for any task that needed to be accomplished, the tools and materials would be provided for me. And without the spark of original creativity, putting the Lego pieces together was the dull monotony of fulfilling someone else’s factory work blueprint.

When I saw the jumble of lumber next to a korok in an adorable backpack, I immediately mentally put together what needed to be done, and thought, “What kind of Nintendo Labo bullshit is this?” The tediousness of rotating wood, sticking it to a hook, waiting for the korok to go down the slide - this was minutes of gameplay execution from the seconds of intuition I had of what the game wanted from me. And the reward was a measly two gold turds. I felt like I deserved five.

I feel like Aonuma has gone off the deep end. He’s spent so long in this game engine that he’s forgotten what made the original Breath of the Wild experience so special. He’s made a game for speedrunners without designing a game for the common folk first. In Breath of the Wild, the myriad systems, the freedom of choice, the hidden depth of the game’s chemistry and physics mechanics - all of those were introduced slowly in juxtaposition to a Link who had nothing but a shirt and a stick to his name. Everything felt special because the game beat you down and dead early on to make you appreciate and critically examine anything that could provide the slightest advantage to survival.

In Tears of the Kingdom, you gain the ability to Ascend through ceilings, (without stamina cost!!!), before you get the option to increase your stamina. Before you have even found anywhere worth climbing, any heights out of reach. There is nothing to instill that feeling of “I can’t climb there now, but some day, I will!” This is so wild to me. That emotion will never blossom when you’re given a cheat code at Level 1. It will cause people to look for places they can exploit their cheat code instead of… engaging with what was the entire foundation of the freedom of exploration in the first game!

Cannot overstate how much I felt something thematically crack inside of me when Tears of the Kingdom did not even suggest the possibility that I could upgrade my stamina wheel with my first blessing, locking me into more health. For a cutscene.

For a god-awful cutscene where Zelda fucks off before we chase down some NPCs to chase down some other NPCs to watch her fuck off again.

Does this all sound nit-picky? Do I sound insane? I sound petty to myself! But I have to be honest, this game failed to ignite my curiosity! And I gave Breath of the Wild 5 stars! It really does make me wonder how much of a game experience is built on the expectations built by its opening hours. In a way, if the only difference between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is the introduction and framing, that would be a valuable lesson on how important those beginning elements are.

I know that’s not the only difference. Tears of the Kingdom is anime as fuck. It’s tacky as hell. I lost it when Zelda’s magic iPad made the real-world iPad camera shutter sound.

Tears of the Kingdom is not a new game. It’s a jerry-rigged retrofitting of an existing game by an old man who saw Fortnite once since 2017, approved by a company who has no idea what he’s doing or why the old game sold so many millions of copies. Of course they’d be up for a direct sequel asset reuse that sounded vaguely like Minecraft! I’m just disappointed that the same team who showed they were capable of creating such a fully realized thematic throughline of a game were content to corrupt something beautiful just for the sake of convenience.

Maybe Link’s awful haircut and corrupted hand are a perfect visual metaphor for this game’s soul. A bunch of concepts grafted onto something great with no regard for how inelegantly they clash, while also showing a lack of maintenance to keep what came before presentable.

I’m so glad I didn’t pay $70 ($70!) for this game, or else I would have felt obligated to stick around long enough to understand the gacha mechanics enough to get mad at them.

——

June 28th 2023 Edit: wish different reviews could have different play statuses. Oh well. “Completed” the game with more words,, but in my heart this review should stay Abandoned.

Veredito: muito, mas muito bom mesmo, e apesar disso espero que a Nintendo nunca mais faça algo assim de novo.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild lançou em 2017 e é um dos melhores jogos que já joguei. É o típico caso de um jogo cheio de problemas, PRINCIPALMENTE de escopo, mas que a gente perdoa por causa do nível ridículo de ambição do projeto, e pelo tanto de coisas que ele faz bem feitas. Tears of the Kingdom, que lançou em maio deste ano e que tou jogando praticamente sem parar desde então, é... bom, ele é Breath of the Wild 2.

Não é só uma continuação direta da trama, mas sim uma continuação direta, ponto. Pra todos os fins.

Deixando todo o fanatismo da internet (contra e a favor do jogo) de lado, ele começou como uma expansão do Breath, que meio que foi ficando grande demais e acabou virando um jogo separado. E dá pra ver. As mecânicas básicas são as mesmas, a física é a mesma, o mapa é o mesmo, os povos são os mesmos, os colecionáveis são idênticos (prepare-se para mais shrines, koroks e fotos pro compêndio), quase todos os inimigos se repetem, inclusive minichefes, e você tem de novo 12+1 memórias pra coletar e 4 dungeons principais - que por sinal estão nos exatos mesmos lugares do jogo anterior - antes de encarar a dungeon final.

Mas tudo aqui é maior, é mais ambicioso ainda. É como se a equipe olhasse pro Breath e pensasse "É, até que ficou legalzinho, MAS AINDA NÃO FICOU BOM O BASTANTE, bora fazer de novo maior e melhor!" e daí foi lá e fez exatamente isso.

O mapa foi mais que duplicado: temos, além do mapa básico que é o mesmo do Breath, também o que seria um Dark World do ALttP/Lorule do Between Worlds/futuro do Ocarina, sem contar também várias ilhas voadoras no céu. As 4 habilidades básicas do Breath? Substituídas por 4 novas que não só fazem praticamente tudo o que dava pra fazer antes, mas transformam o mundo num verdadeiro parquinho. Sério, tem gente na internet construindo UM FODENDO METAL GEAR FUNCIONAL usando a Ultrahand e os zonai devices. O combate e travessia foram expandidos absurdamente com a Fuse e a Ascend. Poder arremessar materiais com as mãos e flechas faz Breath parecer um beta. Se você souber usar a criatividade, poder rebobinar os objetos com a Rewind trivializa combates e puzzles de forma brilhante. Essa é a chave do sucesso do Tears: ele te dá todas as ferramentas pra você transformar o mundo no seu baú de brinquedos, e fala:

- Seja feliz!!!!

E você é feliz, MUITO FELIZ... Por um tempo. Vamos falar logo dos tais problemas de escopo, pra eu poder voltar a elogiar o jogo.

Infelizmente todos os defeitos de Breath voltam. E com a ambição ainda maior do jogo novo, eles voltam SEM DÓ. Cedo ou tarde, chega uma hora que bate o cansaço do mundo aberto gigantesco, e bate PESADO. Depois de quase 300h brincando em Hyrule, 152 shrines, 120 lightroots, mais da metade dos koroks, quase todas as roupas/armaduras, de upar elas até mais da metade do que o jogo permite, pegar quase todos os tecidos de paraglider, ajudar o Addison com quase todas as plaquinhas, fazer todas as sidequests fora umas 10, encontrar todos os poços exceto 2, fazer todas as side-adventures, completar o compêndio com fotos de todas as armas, animais, monstros, chefes e minichefes, materiais e tesouros, raidar praticamente todas as cavernas e acampamentos inimigos, matar quase todos os minichefes... o jogo me fala que fiz pouco mais de 80% do conteúdo dele.

E sinceramente, tou bem cansado. Foi bom, foi gostoso, mas eu não aguento mais. O problema todo não é o jogo ser imenso. O problema é que, assim como Breath, ele NÃO TEM VARIEDADE SUFICIENTE que justifique o tamanho absurdo dele.

Os koroks? São 1000 no total, sendo que eles param de ser úteis (servem pra aumentar o espaço no inventário) depois dos 400 e poucos. Mas o pior mesmo é a repetição, porque só têm uns 20 jeitos diferentes de encontrar um korok. Então se prepare pra fazer os mesmíssimos mini-puzzles centenas de vezes, ou pra ser forçado a levar pouca arma e sofrer bastante na 2ª metade do jogo.

Shrines? São ótimos, certo? Afinal, são micro-dungeons que balanceiam bem o ritmo da exploração do jogo, além de te deixarem mais forte e servirem de pontos de teletransporte. Pois é, pena que se repetem demais. Vários são únicos, mas também existem 2 ou 3 tipos de shrine que o jogo recicla O TEMPO TODO sem vergonha nenhuma. Não aguentava mais entrar cheio de curiosidade num shrine inédito pra mim e ver que fiquei pelado MAIS UMA VEZ. Chegou uma hora que eu tava o próprio meme do C.J. pensando "ai, merda, lá vamos nós de novo".

Side-quests? Menos de 10 valem a pena. E o jogo deve ter algumas centenas. Minichefes? Todos os 6 são excelentes, sendo 3 chupinhados do Breath. E se prepare pra enfrentar todos umas 500 vezes. Encarar um frox pela zilhonésima vez não é legal, NÃO IMPORTA o quanto froxes sejam inimigos bem projetados.

Têm muitos e muitos outros exemplos, mas acho que deu pra entender. Zelda precisava ter cozinhado muito, mas MUITO mais variedade dentro das mesmas ideias antes de sair do forno. Todos os shrines, koroks, minichefes etc precisavam ser únicos. Não tem jeito de contornar isso: ele é vítima do próprio escopo, e você vai cansar.

Pra piorar, com as ideias novas vieram também novos problemas. A física excelente foi refinada e melhorada graças aos zonai devices, mas a câmera ficou um lixo. O jogo lá pelas tantas coloca companions opcionais pra lutarem ao seu lado, mas não tem outro jeito de falar isso: a IA deles é uma MERDA e você constantemente vai desligar os companions de propósito só pra eles pararem de te atrapalhar. A história em geral é muito melhor, mas ela agora vai completamente contra a ideia de mundo aberto, além de ter um milhão de buracos. Sério, todo mundo que eu conheço sacou bem no comecinho qual era o grande plot twist do final. E a dissonância ludonarrativa vem com força. É extremamente irritante eu estar com a Espada Mestra pendurada nas costas e saber exatamente onde está a Zelda - porque o jogo já mostrou explicitamente isso pro Link numa cutscene - e mesmo assim todos os personagens NÃO PARAREM DE FALAR que eu preciso encontrar a princesa e pegar a espada. Não dá pra perdoar o quanto TODOS OS PERSONAGENS INCLUSIVE O LINK precisam ser completamente idiotas e tapados só pela conveniência do roteiro.

Mas apesar de tudo... a história realmente é muito melhor, e isso porque a do Breath já era ótima. O vilão agora é um personagem de verdade e bem completinho. A Espada Mestra tem um arco super interessante entre a introdução e a batalha final. O rei de Hyrule tem profundidade, motivações, relacionamentos reais. A princesa Zelda é alguém com medos e esperanças muito acreditáveis, mais ainda do que era no Breath, onde ela já era uma personagem ótima.

E por mais que o jogo tenha problemas indesculpáveis de escopo, não dá pra negar que isso foi em troca de um mundo aberto muito bem feito e de uma missão principal divertida e mega épica. Por mais que os shrines repetidos sejam um saco, os shrines únicos são muito, mas muito bons mesmo, e em todos os casos IR ATÉ O SHRINE é sempre uma delícia. Ir até qualquer lugar é uma delícia. O fato de serem só 4 dungeons incomoda DE NOVO (tanto Tears como Breath precisavam de NO MÍNIMO umas 10), mas elas são bem melhores do que as 4 de antes, e os chefes são todos incríveis.

Acaba não incomodando taaaaaanto assim quando você encontra um acampamento inimigo que não vai te recompensar com nada interessante, porque o ato em si de encontrar e raidar o acampamento foi bom.

- Agora vou de Lookout Landing pra Vila Kakariko e depois pro pico do Monte Lanayru.
[após um "pequeno" desvio de rota e depois de mais de 2h, vários shrines e koroks e minichefes e poços e cavernas aleatórias]
- ...pra onde eu tava indo mesmo? Eu tinha alguma coisa pra fazer em um lugar específico, não tinha?

E essa sensação é maravilhosa.

Tears pega a base do Breath e leva até a conclusão lógica do que era pra ser uma DLC que cresceu demais: ficou ainda maior, ainda mais parrudo, ainda mais ambicioso. E vou falar que eu gostei MUITO do resultado final. Problemas e tudo.

Duvido que eu fosse conseguir tankar um Breath 3. Depois de tankar o 2, preciso dar um tempo de jogos que exigem jornadas imensas antes de poder zerar. Acho que preciso de um descanso de jogos, na real, vou ali ler um Sherlock Holmes, um Harry Potter, um Pedro Bandeira, sei lá. Foi muito exaustivo, e espero de verdade que o próximo Zelda não seja tão derivativo quanto este aqui foi, porque aí realmente não vai dar pra defender. O 1 foi bom, o 2 foi melhor ainda e conseguiu segurar as pontas mesmo com tanta coisa igual... mas um 3 vai ser inviável. Tá na hora de criar coisas novas usando a mesma fórmula, como Zelda sempre fez, e não ficar só repetindo a fórmula e achando que já tá bom. Mas se eu disser que não gostei, que essas quase 300h não foram MUITO BEM GASTAS e que eu não tava MUITO FELIZ durante elas, porra, isso seria uma mentira deslavada.

PS: Esqueci de comentar na review, mas esse jogo é um milagre técnico. Ele conseguir EM ABSOLUTO rodar no Switch já é bruxaria por si só. Ele rodar em 30 quadros por segundo quase que cravados, com aquele tanto de coisa na tela, especialmente quando você tá voando por aí numa motoca aérea? E isso num tablet que já lançou obsoleto mais de 6 anos antes? Pura magia negra. Não tem outra explicação.

The day is April 1st, 2024. April Fools' Day! What are some silly pranks I can play on people on such a momentous occasion as this?
I've got a good one! I'll finally play the sequel to that game I hate, and see if it's actually any good.

---

I've made it clear enough how much I hate Breath of the Wild, how much it quite literally pains me to play it. Obviously, I wouldn't be looking forward to Tears of the Kingdom either. Especially with just how much they tried to hype it up, like good lord this shit ended at least four Nintendo Directs. Despite all that, I decided to make a fool of myself today and give it a try, thanks to my brother being a BOTW fan in my stead, and purchasing this game back when it released. Be surprised when you hear this: I still don't like it.

I went into TOTK with no intentions of ever finishing it, and certainly no intentions of putting too much time into it. I gave it two hours, finished two shrines, and fucked around with whatever new mechanics they gave me. Shockingly though, I can at the very least admit that I didn't hate the new ideas. I enjoyed fusing items together a decent amount. It's definitely more Zelda than I felt with its prequel.

Unfortunately, there's still the entire rest of the game. The large, open world that has me running in circles for lord knows how long because I can't figure out a way to reach that spot I pinpointed on my map. The open world that I will be begrudgingly slogging through because my stamina doesn't allow me to speed up for any longer than three seconds. The very same open world that ends up giving me a headache if I spend too long in it. I didn't like it then, and I still don't like it now, fun new gimmicks or otherwise.

But hey, that's more than I could say for Breath of the Wild. Given that I had even the slightest amount of fun ever, I can still call it better than the first. It even took a little longer to give me a headache this time around. Maybe next time we can get an actual Zelda game.

---

why did i do this?

I didn't like BOTW so I don't know why I thought this would be any different, grabbed by the hype once again! I just never learn!

Nothing about these games gives me that revolutionize of the open world genre buzz that they're praised for and honestly, it pisses me off that I don't get it. It makes me feel INSANE when I see the praise, but it's just not clicking.

The new building mechanics feel clunky to me, but I do see the vision. It's a toybox with more toys to fool around with. For me though, the thought of doing shrines again, especially with these mechanics, just makes me want to turn off.

For positives, I do enjoy the visuals. I think the art direction and presentation are gorgeous. It's got that Nintendo charm that always appeals to me, which further makes it sadder that it doesn't hit for me.

I've put in around 10 hours and I've had my fill. Overall, it's my own fault. I knew I wouldn't like it, but a mixture of FOMO and hope that something would grab me took hold. It has put me in that Zelda mood though, I'll probably replay one of the older ones soon.

Remember that moment in Breath of the Wild's tutorial where you have to chop down a tree and then use it as a bridge to cross a river? Remember thinking 'woah, that was neat!' and then not doing that again for the rest of your 80-hour playthrough? Remember when you unlocked Revali's Gale and then realized you would never have to actually work to gain height again? Remember how everyone, even Breath of the Wild's biggest fans, unanimously considered Eventide Island the best part of the entire game?

It wasn't until I played Rain World, a game so dedicated to its survivalist philosophy that it forces you to become intimately familiar with every facet of how its world works if you want to make even the slightest bit of progress, that I fully realized why all of this stuff bothered me so much. At first it was simple: what good was one of the most robust physics systems ever conceived without any challenges that tested your mastery over it? But Rain World, by counterexample, honed this down, helping me understand just how much Breath of the Wild takes every opportunity possible to provide you with means to avoid actually feeling like you're part of Hyrule. The first item you're handed prevents fall damage from ever being an issue. Beating any of the Divine Beasts "rewards" you with ways to avoid engaging in climbing and combat for the rest of your adventure. Harsh climates may pose a threat at first, but, quickly enough, you'll find clothes that (using a menu!!) completely neutralize them. There's a difference in philosophy here that doesn't necessarily come down to their respective levels of difficulty: Breath of the Wild gives you abilities, while Rain World gives you tools. Breath of the Wild makes you lord of your environment, while Rain World puts you at the mercy of it. I could grasp why so many were enchanted by the former, but, for me, Rain World was enchanting, and Breath of the Wild was boring. Why would I chop down a tree and waste my axe's durability when I could, with the press of a button, raise a magic platform out of the water and use that instead? Obviously, the game deserved credit for even allowing you to do any of these things, but I'd rather see a Hyrule where Link felt just as governed by the forces of nature as everybody else.

The last thing I wanted this game to be was more Breath of the Wild (in my eyes there was already far too much of it) and, at first glance, it is. Same Link, same Hyrule, same aesthetic, same general structure. Squint and it passes as an extensive set of DLC for the 2017 release, but, it's only a few hours into the Great Sky Islands when these potential fears get put to rest for good. For me, it happened as I walked out of the penultimate tutorial shrine, stepped onto a Zonai Wing, and used it to fly all the way back to the Temple of Time. Because here's the big open secret that nobody (except for me, apparently) wants to admit: traversal in Breath of the Wild sucks. Having to walk every five seconds to manage your stamina isn't fun, climbing isn't fun, and hopefully I don't have to tell you that fast travel isn't fun. Y'know what is fun, though? Shield surfing. Even though it's generally impractical, usually ending in a broken shield rather than any sort of speedy forward movement, I still found myself doing it nearly every time I was on top of a steep enough hill. Something about just letting it fly and relinquishing control over to the game's physics and hoping for the best never got old, and Tears of the Kingdom is like if they designed an entire game around shield surfing. Zonai Devices are essentially adaptations of traditional Zelda items into the open-air formula, as each has a specific intended use- a spring helps you gain height, a wheel moves objects, and a head targets enemies- but can be creatively applied to other, potentially unrelated scenarios. Whereas Breath of the Wild felt like a set of mechanics without any real structure to encourage you to get the most out of them (and that was a large part of its mass appeal, I get it) Tears comes with one built in. Whenever you're running or swimming or climbing a long distance without first constructing some kind of car or boat or hovercraft, you're losing. And while these vehicles could have just turned out to be another way to bypass Hyrule's rules, they're really the opposite, as Link never feels more at the mercy of his environment than when he's piloting one. Gliders have to be initially propelled in some fashion since they can't gain momentum from a sitting position, fans move your craft in circles instead of forward if placed at a slightly off angle, wheels get caught on awkward terrain, boats are in danger of sinking if their cargo isn't balanced correctly. Controlling a vehicle always means going toe-to-toe with the game's physics, and it's the simple fact that nothing seems to work perfectly that makes this game great. Ultrahand was a turn off at first because of how long it felt like it took to build anything, but, somehow, even this flaw turns into a strength. I often found myself getting impatient and slapping a vehicle together haphazardly, which tends to lead to the most entertaining results. The best parts of the open-air Zeldas are when a harebrained scheme somehow works (or fails in humorous fashion) and figuring out the nuances of how every device works by watching them move around in ways I didn't expect is some of the most pure fun I've had with a game in a long time. Likewise, it's no surprise that you can't purchase any specific device individually and instead have to work with what the gacha dispensaries provide you with, as it's really about making-do rather than having a clean solution for any particular problem. If Breath of the Wild was about giving you ways to manipulate your environment, Tears of the Kingdom is about giving you ways to be manipulated by your environment.

But, perhaps the bigger accomplishment here is that Tears somehow manages to justify reusing Breath of the Wild's map. Since the main theme this time around is efficient traversal, an entirely new Hyrule would have likely resulted in players neglecting vehicles to exhaustively explore each region first, whereas now you're already familiar with points of interest and the onus of enjoyment is shifted from the destination to the journey. And if you've forgotten where you should be going, the game makes sure to remind you, as the bubbulfrog and stable quests, which you'll want to activate ASAP, are located in Akkala and Hebra, two of the last areas I went to the first time I played Breath of the Wild, respectively. You're essentially nudged into doing a breadth-first search of the world instead of a depth-first one, and when your players are reaching the exterior of the map before the interior, you're free to fill that interior with... challenges! Despite my Breath of the Wild veteranship, my first dozen or so hours of Tears had me run up a tree to escape angry bokoblins, struggle against a stone talus in a cave because I was used to fighting them in open areas, and be genuinely perplexed on how to reach a floating shrine. Likewise, I actually felt like I had to prepare and come back to the siege on Lurelin Village, the Great Deku Tree quest, and that test-your-strength bell ringing minigame. It never gets especially difficult (not that I expected or even wanted it to) but there's clearly an effort to set up hurdles that players may not be able to jump on their first lap around the track. And while you could argue that these are simply iterative improvements, to me they're complimentary to the vehicle construction's philosophy of being restricted by the wild instead of empowered by it. Fuse does a good chunk of the heavy lifting here, and marks a shift away from pure sandbox and towards survival-sandbox, as all it really is is menu-free crafting. It's not only enjoyable on a base level, fostering experimentation for both useful and useless combinations to the same degree, but it also provides a sense of scarcity that wasn't really present in Breath of the Wild. Gems are no longer abstract materials that exist only to be sold or traded in exchange for armor, but real objects that have a real effect when fused. Drops from keese, chuchus, and moblins actually feel valuable. Elemental arrows aren't gifted via chests, but created on the fly depending on the situation. This time around, you scavenge with purpose. Out of bombs? Find a cave. Need stronger weapons? Kill stronger monsters. Want to upgrade your battery? Test your luck mining Zonaite in the depths. Revali's Gale exists in this game, though you don't perform it by waiting for a cooldown and then holding the jump button, instead by burning a pinecone using wood and flint that you had to harvest from somewhere in the world. Unfortunately, the presence of unlimited fast travel, universal menu use, and generous autosave means that this survivalist mindset isn't seen through to its fullest potential. It feels like a very Miyamotian design choice to subtract as little from a character's inherent moveset as possible in between games, so hopefully the next Zelda will star a new Link (on a new, more powerful console.) But one persistent ability stings more than the rest: the paraglider. Replacing it would've been easy- a shield fused with some kind of cloth could have been made to have the same effect, and I can only imagine how much more interesting this game would've gotten if descents actually took planning. But, even when you get to the point where nothing can realistically touch you, your other powers never stop feeling like tools and not abilities. There's a reason why this game's runes don't have cooldowns- all of them require external factors to actually be useful. Whereas Sheikah Slate bombs provided a consistent source of weaponless damage, stasis could be used on enemies directly, and cryonis, while requiring a body of water, always produced a static pillar indifferent to its source's movement, their Purah Pad equivalents call for more awareness. Ultrahand necessitates an understanding of how environmental building blocks could potentially fit together to achieve a specific goal, fuse relies on extrapolating an object's behavior and reasoning out as to how it would work when attached to a weapon or shield, and ascend extends your arsenal of means of creative traversal, asking you to survey the surroundings around a height that you want to reach without having to climb. Maybe I'm just lacking a certain creative ligament, but recall's main use for me was to retrieve devices that fell off of a cliff as I was trying to use them, which, to be fair, happens all the time, but it's still disappointing that there's not much to it outside of the puzzles designed around it. Even so, it doesn't break the throughline that happens to be my best guess as to why I enjoy messing around with the chemistry system in this game so much more than in Breath of the Wild: everything you're able to do here comes directly from the world itself.

And what a world it is! Caves were a no-brainer for a sequel, but their implementation here is fantastic. Add an underworld and all of a sudden your overworld doesn't feel bland anymore; constantly checking just around the corner for ways that natural features might open up or connect to others. Bubbulfrogs, at first, felt too carrot-on-a-stick-y to me, but the reward for collecting them is so insignificant that their main purpose instead becomes just to mark caves as fully explored on your map. Unless, of course, you go for all of them, which I personally have no desire to do. If you imagine a scale of collectables from shrines, which you're given enough tools to find all of without an egregious time commitment, to koroks, which you should be institutionalized if you even consider 100%ing, caves sit comfortably in the middle. Their quantity is limited to the point that they're all sufficiently detailed and memorable, but high enough that I feel like I could replay this game and still make significant new discoveries, which was very much not the case for my second run of Breath of the Wild. That sentiment also extends to the depths, which is the only location in either of these games where Link actually feels out of his element, and thus automatically the most enjoyable to explore. In the dark, surrounded by bizarre, hard-to-internalize geography, with tough enemies and an actually punishing status effect... or, what would be one if the game didn't chicken out and make gloom poisoning curable simply by going outside. Though, that's really only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the not-so-invisible hand of modern Nintendo's design philosophy inevitably making its presence known. Every beach has a sail, every hill a sled, every sky island enough materials to get to the next without hitch. When vehicles are this fun to use by themselves, I don't mind all that much, though it does occasionally feel like I'm just doing something the game wants me to do instead of playing by my own rules. It bothers me more in shrines, which, unfortunately, took a massive hit in between games. I've always held the opinion that they don't have to contain amazing puzzles, but should instead serve to prod players towards ways of interacting with open-air mechanics that they might not have thought of themselves. Unfortunately, here, they're neither, being solvable about five seconds after you walk in the door, and teaching you things that you'd already known, or, even worse, wish you'd discovered yourself. I felt pretty damn clever the first time I fused a spring to my shield and surfed on it to gain height, but that feeling was diminished when I was given a pre-fused spring/shield after beating a combat shrine. There's enough going on in the overworld at this point that I'd honestly have been fine if shrines were done away with altogether, except for maybe those mini-Eventide immersive sim ones, which were great all the way through. The lost koroks and crystal missions (because, let's be real, they're the same thing) turn out to be better puzzles than anything inside a shrine without even needing a loading screen or a change of scenery. Didn't think it was possible, but the story is somehow also a downgrade. Breath of the Wild's memories meant that Zelda herself could be characterized in a variety of ways depending on which order you found them in. It didn't do much for me personally, but at least it was going for something. Tears's just feel like watching a series of cutscenes out of order, and by the time you've seen two or three of them you know exactly where the story's going, and also that it's godawful. I'm not sure if it's the dreadful voice acting, or just holdovers from Skyward Sword's writing staff, but it's bizarre to see a series struggle this hard with sentimentality when it used to come so naturally to it. Chibi Link waving bye to his grandma while leaving Outset Island makes me feel more than all of the cutscenes in both of these games do combined. Not that it actually matters, of course, until it starts affecting the gameplay. Locking you into scripted sequences for every Divine Beast was already an egregious clash against player freedom, but they at least made sense logistically. Link could easily reach Vah Medoh by himself if it was in this game, and you actually can get to the water temple (and possibly the others... I didn't bother to check) without completing the corresponding sidequest, only to be arbitrarily rejected from starting the dungeon. Considering the sages only grant you slightly better versions of things you can already do, going through the dungeons without unlocking any of them could've been an enjoyable challenge on subsequent playthroughs. Unfortunately, it's not the only aspect of the game left out of the player's hands.

Waypoints still have no place in a Zelda game. Sidequest lists still have no place in a Zelda game. Loading screen tips still have no place in a Zelda game. And don't get it twisted: this is my favorite game with "Zelda" in its title since '02, but it's still not a Zelda game. Breath of the Wild's marketing as a modern reimagining of Zelda 1 has always struck me as phony, because, aside from not being confined to the series's formula, they're not at all alike. That game, to me, is characterized less by unlimited freedom and more by the fact that you had to find everything yourself, whereas every point of interest in both of the open-air Zeldas is signposted to some degree. Even if you love these games, you have to admit that the appeal has shifted. It's not about exploring to learn more about the world anymore, it's about exploring to find unique scenarios. Aside from a certain way that the depths and overworld are connected (that took me an embarrassingly long time to put together) there's nothing to figure out here. I don't want Impa to tell me that geoglyphs should be viewed from the sky, I want to see them on the ground and logically reason that out for myself. Talking to villagers used to be one of my favorite parts of Zelda games, but now it's something that I actively avoid doing. But this general overhaul isn't my problem; my problem is that Nintendo thinks that no aspects of the previous games are worth carrying over. What if certain caves had Dark Souls-style illusory walls, and you could get the Lens of Truth at some point to see through them? What if there was one guardian left alive in the deepest wilds of Hyrule that you could just stumble upon? What if there was an especially difficult, especially complex shrine somewhere in the world that no NPC even hinted at? Why is there still no hookshot? It feels like Nintendo's terrified to implement anything unique that some players might miss, but the point of a world this vast should be to conceal secrets. I want to travel to a far-off outskirt of the map and find something that doesn't exist anywhere else. A Link to the Past gives me that feeling. The Wind Waker gives me that feeling. Neither of the open-air games do. The closest Tears comes is with the Misko treasures (which are much more fun if you haven't found the hints leading to them) and the costumes in the depths (which are much more fun if you haven't found the maps pointing to them.) And not because of the reward, but because they're housed in cave systems and defunct buildings that are architecturally distinct enough to feel memorable. Exploration in this game is far more varied than in Breath of the Wild, but this Hyrule still doesn't feel mysterious. I can't help my mind from drifting back to Rain World, which went the distance to fill every corner of its universe with unique entities that most players won't even see, let alone meaningfully interact with, part of the reason why it'll continue running laps around every other open world until the end of time. This game consistently delighted me, but it never enchanted me. We may never see a traditional Zelda again, and, if we don't, I'll genuinely feel like something is missing from the series (alongside an actual soundtrack.) If Tears of the Kingdom was, like, 20% more cryptic, I think it'd be my favorite game of all time, but, if I'm being honest with you, it comes pretty close anyway.

In many ways, I don't understand it. This is likely the longest review I've written on this site, but everything above is just an attempt at rationalization as to how this game was able to capture me for four months of nightly sessions when I got sick of Breath of the Wild about a third of the way in. I bounced between an eight and a nine throughout my playthrough, but I don't think I can earnestly not consider this game one of my favorites when it contains so many activities that I just love doing. I love exploring caves. I love trying new fuse combinations. I love picking up korok hitchhikers. I love gathering my party of sages. I love putting my map together in the depths. I love sailing to new sky islands. I love chucking shock fruits at a lizalfos standing in a knee-high pond until it dies. I love watching bots take out monster camps for me. I love using Sidon's ability and making my water warrior marbled gohma hammer do 200 damage. I love riding a Half-Life 2 airboat through flooded tunnels. I love perching a Zonai Cannon on top of a hill at just the right height to stunlock an ice talus. I love driving a monster truck around and sniping bokoblins with Yunobo. I love ascending to the top of mountains. It's not the risky endeavor I asked for back in 2020, and it's still far cry from Nintendo's best sequels- Majora's Mask, Yoshi's Island, and even Mario Sunshine- which may straight up piss off faithfuls of the original. I have a hard time imagining any fans of Breath of the Wild outright disliking this game, though it has succeeded in converting a skeptic in yours truly to the religion of open-air Zelda. It's nowhere near perfect, but perfection is overrated anyway.

this is probably very obvious to most people, but if you liked breath of the wild or thought that it was flawed but a good jumping off point for a sequel, you will probably enjoy tears of the kingdom. however, if you thought breath of the wild was bad as a game and/or as a direction for the series, tears of the kingdom is not going to make you a fan.

the dungeons are better, but they're still formatted like in breath of the wild. the shrines are better, but they're still shrines. the bosses are much better, but they're still fought with the same combat system. the world is technically bigger, but it's built off of the same world as before. the story is definitely better, but it's still shown and told the same way. the construction gimmick gives you and arguably encourages more avenues to experiment with the game's systems, but they're still the same systems. there's still korok seeds, there's still bad swimming, and the enemy variety still leaves a lot to be desired. it's a game that does a good amount to polish the game that came before it, but it still is adamant about being it's own type of zelda and that won't be for everyone.

for me personally, i enjoy tears of the kingdom as a sequel to breath of the wild and that's how i've chosen to view the game because that's what it was trying to be. the traditional zelda aspects, while improved somewhat, haven't been improved nearly enough for me to see it as a good zelda in the same way i see other zelda games as good zeldas but it wasn't trying to be other zeldas and that's okay with me, but it won't be for everyone.

not at all worth $70 though (no game is)

(6-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

I met a goat guy 3 times. He had a long beard and I just felt weird.

[Dad's note: She had her tonsils out the same day TotK came out, so she was in a semi-delirious state when she insisted on reviewing the game. I was very impressed that she still managed to get through a couple shrines on her own!]

The Far Cry Elden Ring-ification of Breath of the Wild with a smattering of end-of-chapter Fortnite and New Funky Mode.

While BotW was content to let players roam free in a sprawling world, Tears of the Kingdom reins in this freedom considerably and hides the guardrails from the player with horse blinders. Link is still welcome to run around Hyrule at will, but the primary storyline holds the keys which allow actual exploratory liberation. My first dozen hours completely ignored Lookout Landing, leaving me without critical tools like the paraglider and towers. That was the most challenging TotK ever got, and the most it (unintentionally) forced me to think outside the box. I dragged gliders to the tops of hills labouriously, I used a horse and cart, I made elaborate vehicles simply to get around. I scrounged for rockets, fans, batteries, and air balloons to ascend to sky islands, making it to a few of the lower ones with great accomplishment. I committed to putting off the towers as long as I could, not realising they were an outright necessity. Seeing how this additional layer of the map functioned demystified it severely, rendering a challenge into a stepping stone for parcels of content.

The depths, like the skies above, are filled with potential. Many of its spaces are similarly wide open to encourage blind exploration with vehicles. Only there is nearly no purpose to any of it. Lightroots are a checkbox which dismantle the most compelling part of the depths -- their darkness. The depths are a place you visit to grab zonaite or amiibo armour and leave. As the Fire Temple is within the depths, and it being the first I tackled, I falsely believed there would be more dungeons strewn about below, simply a part of the world rather than instanced away from it. Sadly, it is the exception.

The other temples are obfuscated and inaccessible without their related storylines, which is itself fine (the temples are impossible to progress through without their associated power anyways) but this leaves the world feeling more boxed in, a selection of rooms in an overly-long hallway. A spare few rooms complement each other, most of them do not. The walls of the rooms must be thick. Whether it is shrines, side quests, or temples, the developers yet again seemingly have no way of knowing what abilities the player might have, what puzzles they have encountered, what skills they remember. All that they know is that in the Fire Temple, you have a Goron. In the Water Temple, you have Zora armour. The positive is, of course, that these things can thus be tackled in any order without a fear of missing out on anything. The downside is that there is never anything more to a shrine, a temple, or anything than what the player encounters the first go around. There is no impetus to return to a location when you have a better tool, or a wider knowledge of how the game's mechanics work. You show up, experience the room, and leave. With 300 map pins at your disposal, and similar issues arising in BotW, there's a sense that the developers chickened out near the end, too afraid to let the player (gasp) backtrack or (gasp) miss out.

Ironically enough, the lack of FOMO is what I miss most. When I was towerlessly exploring with a hodgepodge of trash scavenged from around the world, I felt free. I felt clever! When I discovered the intended mode of play, however, I felt I was putting a square peg in a square hole. There's a crystal that needs to be moved to a far away island? Before, I might have made a horror of Octoballoons and Korok Fronds with Fans and Springs to get it where it needed to go. When the Fruit of Knowledge was consumed, I saw the parts for the prebuilt Fanplane were right next to the Crystal. There's a breakable wall in a dungeon? Bomb Flowers or a hammer are right there. It is incredibly safe. It is a pair of horse blinders that you can decorate as you please. Go ahead and make your mech, you are still on the straight and narrow path.

TotK tries to bring back the linearity of Zeldas past within the BotW framework, but it ignores that the linearity was speckled with a weave of areas which expanded alongside your arsenal, rather than shrinking. Everything here is incongruous, a smörgåsbord of cool set pieces that simply don't go together. There is too much content (Elden Ring) that is too self-contained (end of chapter Fortnite) and too afraid that you will not experience it (New Funky Mode).

Did I have fun? Yes. But I had to make it myself.

(9-year-old's review, typed by his dad)

(adopts old-sounding voice) My son recently began— Dad, type it.

My son recently began his wonderful journey into his nice, wonderful, bean-covered world, and also there's purple stuff underground, don't go in there. And in the sky, baby islands. Nonononono I said "they be islands".

(Drops fancy voice) And also there's this weird goat, who's name is ROAR-oo. And also there's a boat in the sky. You have to hop on rocks. Bye.

[Dad's Note: When he said "Rauru", he didn't say the word "ROAR", he roared as loud as he could, and then said "oooo".]

As I initially set off to finish the last of the remaining dungeons, I round a corner and a stray thought occurs: “Can I dogfight dragons in this game?” After an evening spent on that instead, it turns out that I can both do that and send it tumbling down a cliff in the process. Another thought follows: “This is probably the coolest game I’ve ever played.”

This reflects a strength that’s been carried forward from Breath of the Wild and part of what separated that game from standard open world fare: the “triangle rule.” It includes shaping environmental geometry in such a way that landmarks and other notable sights were deliberately obscured from angles players were most likely to view them from, creating a visual chain of interest as they orient themselves around it. It’s impressive that Tears of the Kingdom retains this considering just how much Hyrule has been reshuffled and expanded upon, but where it particularly excels in this regard is in terms of new additions, namely its tripling down on verticality.

Diving into a well or tree stump, winding up in a complex cave system, finding treasure behind a waterfall or at the top of a hidden shaft and using Ascend to pop out the other end in parts unknown is the exact kind of storybook-like experience that this new formula needed, like meat added to the bones of the sense of adventure BOTW was otherwise so successful at selling. Caves seem a deceptively simple inclusion on a conceptual level – goodness knows open world fantasy games’re no stranger to them – but one reason you couldn’t just plop TOTK’s into some other game is because of how their design’s informed by Link’s traversal options. Just finding them often resembles a scene out of Katsuya Terada’s art for the first few Zelda games, steep climbs into hidden entryways and all, often in a way that foreshadows the challenges inside. Slippery walls, boulders you have to smash your way through, confined spaces and other hazards combine to form the other reason, which is the contrast these environmentally constrained puzzle boxes create with the rest of the game’s freedom.

Shrines and temples alike exemplify this, as much as or more than the spectacle of diving from a sky island straight into the Depths in what’s a sensation I haven’t felt since Gravity Rush 2. Getting goofy with a combination of Ultrahand and Recall or whatever other powers you prefer to circumvent obstacles brings to mind an anecdote I have about a level in Thief 2 called Casing the Joint – years now after first playing that level, I still couldn’t tell you the “proper” way to beat it, because I’d always drag boxes from the opposite end of the level and use them to scramble onto titular joint’s roof before smashing a window that would leave every guard permanently alerted. Scuffed a method as it may sound, the important thing is that the game says “yes” to the player regardless, and the same’s largely true of TOTK; although, as with BOTW, some of its quest design shows that it isn’t fully designed in accordance with these sorts of open-ended solutions (Calip’s omniscient fence in Kakariko comes to mind), this isn’t necessarily so much a flaw as just an indicator that it’s not quite the same type of game. Where limitations like these do exist, they rarely feel so arbitrary as to outweigh the feeling of thinking like an adventurer that comes with nonlinear problem solving through Link’s new, more multifaceted powers.

Fuse is a favourite of mine not just for how it turns any item you come across into a potential tool, but also because this by extension encourages thinking about your equipment more than BOTW required. A bokoblin reaper may share the same animations as a horriblin hammer, but only one of them’s getting used for smashing enemies’ armour, clearing boulders out of caverns or searching for ore among other things. It’s understandable why some players may initially be upset at the apparent lack of any new weapon types compared to BOTW, but considering how many different functionalities are covered thanks to this one power, I wouldn’t be surprised if the devs considered and rejected the idea based on potential new ones being redundant. It feels weird to say so about a game that isn’t by any means hurting for recognition, but this is just one example of how it (and its predecessor) probably deserves more credit for achieving more with less.

This extends to its enemy design. We have a tendency to think of “enemy variety” in terms of the quantity of different enemy types, but what gets lost in that sort of discourse is the mechanical variety between those types. Even in BOTW, bokoblins have more dynamic behaviours than the combined enemy rosters of some other games, and that was without boss bokoblins, aerocudas and Zonai constructs for them to interact with. While TOTK having a higher amount of different and region-specific enemy types is appreciated nonetheless, I’m glad that fleshing out these behaviours amongst a relatively condensed roster still seems to have been a priority.

Flux Constructs are a standout in both that respect and why we ought to also apply this sort of lateral thinking to TOTK’s combat as well – in a game in which you can remove a golem’s hands to prevent him from being able to punch you, shoot dragons out of the sky with a DIY plane or suspend yourself in air with a foot-mounted flamethrower, it seems myopic to judge it based on how many ways Link can swing a weapon. Between using Recall on a certain attack of theirs to fling myself to places I couldn’t otherwise reach, darkness that’s actually dark and which requires resources to dispel, plus summonable AI companions, it becomes apparent that the sceptics were wrong – this isn’t BOTW DLC, but rather a Dragon’s Dogma 2 closed beta.

I’m only being slightly facetious, because much of what makes Dragon’s Dogma and its mutual point of influence, i.e. Skyrim, special as adventure games is present here too. If those two games could each be distilled into one key characteristic, I’d say they’re respectively dynamism and player-directed experiences. TOTK takes both and melds them with a largely honoured commitment to unrestricted problem solving that – in my view – has always felt like the most natural direction for Zelda to go in, forming a superlative package which I think sits at the top of its franchise, its console and potentially open world games in general.

All this and somehow I still feel as if I’ve only scratched the surface of all there is to appreciate here. As many words could be written about the atmosphere invoked during a sunset with the Dragon Head Island theme playing, the extent to which Ganondorf’s phase 2 transition has been living in my head rent free or the fact that, if you think about it, Link himself has become the legend of Zelda. I might play another 100 hours and still be finding new things to wrap my head around. Such a game.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had a challenging mission to accomplish: to surpass Breath of the Wild. In the end, we can say Nintendo achieved this goal and delivered one of the best games of all time.

To start this review, we have to mention that the game is quite similar to its predecessor. The developers reused the same main map but added an entirely new world in the skies and in the depths. Furthermore, the game improved Link's abilities, which, to be honest, are much better.

The graphics in Tears of the Kingdom remain consistent with what we saw in Breath of the Wild. It's a beautiful game, but it would have benefitted from more powerful hardware to run at a higher resolution and without any frame drops. I frequently encountered issues with low frame rates, but it's impressive to see a game of this caliber on the Nintendo Switch.

The story is quite compelling and is undoubtedly the best in the franchise. It's remarkable how the developers crafted such an emotionally engaging narrative and allowed players to have unique experiences due to the myriad possibilities for progression.

Honestly, towards the end of my journey, I started to feel a bit fatigued and rushed through the game a bit. It happened to me, although I haven't seen others complaining about it.

Another important point to mention is that you shouldn't play Tears of the Kingdom if you haven't played Breath of the Wild. Not just because the stories are connected, but also because, after playing Tears of the Kingdom, you'll realize that Breath of the Wild almost feels like a beta version in comparison. So, you won't be able to fully enjoy the first game after experiencing this superior sequel.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a modern classic. It's incredible how Nintendo developed a game that lived up to all the hype players had. It's a must-play title in the Nintendo Switch library, and we'll still be talking about it for decades to come.

not going to give a proper review for this. i typed up my delirious shopping list and am not going to edit it. sorry. the ultrahand glue fumes got me.

as someone who dropped botw after a few hours, this still does a lot of the same stuff i dont like but i kinda kept playing it anyway. no real reason. im just a fan of retreading stuff out of peer pressure

leaving this as “complete” even though i still have to do some endgame stuff please dont tell the backloggd police. itll be accurate by tomorrow i swear. (its all good now)

things i liked:
Sound Design - he goes pitter patter!!
Graphed icks - i think this “cel shading” thing shows promise !
Polish - theyre juggling all of the variables. x, y, z, omega, backwards w, all those letters. other games fall apart when you click to fire the gun. which is more relatable to me but we cant have that now
Music in the Towns - cool stuff, heard an erhu in there a bunch. good instrument, checks my box
Main Abilities - the phys gun thingy is a good gimmick to centre a game around. the other 3 are also good like the rewind time one. now i finally understand king crimson kinda. the botw ones are lame and i cant pretend im jojo in that one
Moon Logic needed to get to the Dungeons - this is good it feels like im really in a legend of

things i kinda liked but kinda didnt like:
Combat - yeah i could do something GOOFY with the phys gun or i can just mash Y a bunch with the weapon im already holding. “weapon durability” is not real anyway you get 1000 knives (rip goat) you can all fuse together with the 5349022 different body parts looted in your backpack. the mokoboboblins all act the same, the like likes spit a few balls at you with the energy of a pensioner. but hitting things with a stick is visceral and timeless so its all good (i do not beat pensioners with sticks)
Sky Islands - theyre samey but a good change of pace. i would see them and have to open the map to be like “have i actually been to this one” because theyre just not visually distinct.
Devices and Gadgets - this is like fine but my approach to anything is never going to be to open a huge ass menu and sift through it, if you already give me the planks and wheels i need to do [TASK] at [LOCATION]
Story - the “memories” part of this game actually gets cool once it gets going. but until then its all just kinda monotonous and i dont care about any of these people. sorry for your kingdom or happy that happened
Dungeons - some of this is fun but if i wanted to visit 5 rooms and call it a day id go to a museum
The World - its too big but theres some cool stuff. this doubles for real life

things i didnt like:
Shrines - you didnt need to make them all look and sound the same. only 10% of these are actually really any fun, im not a preschooler anymore. come on guys i thought people were telling you this 6 years ago
Music Elsewhere - not against a minimalist impressionist thing but both this and the botw ones still just go in one ear out the other
Depths - not fun to navigate, the rewards arent cool, it all looks the same. i see why it wasnt advertised much lol
Cutscenes - hmm this is a non linear game so to ensure people get the memo we will give the same speech at 4 different mandatory locations - “game design” and “narrative effect”. im good
Voice Acting - you can switch to japanese though
Quests - kinda boring
Materials Menu - this is soooooo big lmao. the up button menu is unusable if you dont sort it by “most used”. there was something better that couldve been done here. sorry ill end the review now that its getting to nitpicks


it may have strayed from the series roots, but theres still a bunch of different collectibles and you can make wheely cars that go FAST so whos to say if banjo kazooie: nuts and bolts is really bad. also im pretty sure they play the among us theme in the shrines so i see why the kingdom is malding

I will be slowly adding to this review, and it will likely end up being really, really long, but my summary is this.

Tears of the Kingdom is Domino's Pizza. I ate it sober, and the critics ate it baked out of their minds. To me, its a greasy bit of open world action that satisfies me, but never impresses. To them, its the best food they've ever eaten.

If you liked Breath of the Wild, this is basically that, but removing the sheikah slate powers with infinitely more impractical ones. Gone are remote bombs and stasis, instead you get the incredibly gimmicky recall and ascend powers. Ascend is a nice get out of jail free card in regular caves, but recall is totally useless outside of puzzles. Fuse is a cool gimmick that bellyflops the execution by making the act of fusing a constant tedious process, thats required to make weapons do damage. 90% of items are useless to fuse because they only affect elemental powers and a static power level.

The Ultra Hand steals the show, essentially being a more unwieldy GMod prop gun. The main problem with this power, along with fuse, is that I expected them to be so much deeper than they are. Fuse only really adds an element or higher DPS to weapons, and ultra hand can build bridges or useless makeshift vehicles for your amusement. To make matters worse, you have to grind up useful interactable props in a gacha machine in the sky. So making your own fun is often prefaced with grinding Zonai cores to trade in.

The other big nut tap I recieved was finding out how weak the dungeons are in TOTK. Theres 4 and a quarter dungeons in the game, and all of them can be beaten with little thought in less than 45 minutes each. The bosses are alright, although too easy with the expection of the thunder boss and final bosses. If there was one god damn thing I wanted Nintendo to fix after 6 years, it was the weak ass dungeons. And they couldn't even do that.

Tears of the Kingdom is stuck in limbo. Its not fresh in the slightest, but it slaps some total gimmicks into a 6 year old game, like a 50 year old lady slapping on layers of makeup. The new powers are now my textbook definition of gimmick, its so face slappingly obvious. They seem like gamechangers for about an hour, before fading into the background for 45. The shrines exist as some form of justification for them, making cool but overly simple physics puzzles involving ultrahand.

The massive underground depths are again, cool at first. But they take way too long to explore, are butt ugly and also don't contain any substancial content. So...from a game design perspective, why even have them? It feels cynical, like making a big, second ugly copy pasted overworld will band aid the severe lack of change.

The sky islands are actually a great addition. They feel fresh, with cool geometry, puzzles and rewards, but there's barely any of them. It pains me to say that, because the thing thats all over the marketing actually works as an addition to good game, and they underdevelop them. What were they doing for 6 years??

And I don't really need to say it, but after reading countless critic reviews praising it, I need to. The story and writing is abysmal. Characters have very, very simple personalities. There's no wit or charm to the very inhuman dialogue, consisting of what feels like robots constantly congratulating each other. Way to go, Link! Zelda for example, is just a shell of a human, she doesn't joke, entertain or even try to do anything but exposition dump, as does LITERALLY every major player in the game.

I have more to say...but I'll break here for now. I wouldn't normally go this hard, but after beating it and seeing the insane 97 metascore, I feel obliged to kind of, put my hands up and say, "what the fuck, people?" Its totally good, fine, and fun enough, but so are Hogwarts and Jedi Survivor. Neither of which are worse or better than TOTK. Its like giving the Mario Movie an Oscar.

Breath of the Wild felt like a special game with a creative vision, Tears of the Kingdom feels like an unnecessary retread of it. And I say that, experiencing the new additions, feeling they aren't very meaty or interesting, and looking back at it from the end. I'm not like the reactionaries on this site who are disappointed and give it half a star. By all means, its polished and impressive by the standards of a Switch game in a post PS5 world. But it's no big shot mind blower like the original BOTW, or Elden Ring. It's not fun enough to beat out Sekiro, Doom 2016 or Hollow Knight. It's not creative or even close to as smart as Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium or Forgotten City. It's a fun mindless open world jaunt, and I'm not pretending it's more than that.

     'Rui, do people’s hearts forget how to react to a town that leaves nothing behind to remember it by? In comparison, there is something cruel, merciless about the sight of the Sanriku region, where everyday life was transformed into ruins. For that mountain of debris was the “hope” people had spent years building.'
     – Kyōko Hayashi, Futatabi Rui e, 2013 (tr. Margaret Mitsutani).

Kyōko Hayashi's works attempt to convey to younger generations the lived experience of the hibakusha, the direct survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A particular feature of her work is the blending of temporalities and events, which illustrates her chaotic and almost unspeakable recollection of the events of the 9 August 1945. In Futatabi Rui e (2013), Hayashi writes a new letter to Rui – following the one included in Torinitii kara torinitii e (2000) – meditating on the effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima disaster. She writes: 'perhaps the Great East Japan Earthquake was what turned this destruction in the natural world I thought was eternal into a sign that everything I’d believed in was now crumbling before my eyes' [1].

     Disasters and environmentalism in Japanese fiction

The atomic bombings and the Fukushima disaster have had a lasting impact on Japanese cultural production, like a never-ending ghost that is periodically fanned by current events. Fumiyo Kōno's Yunagi no machi, sakura no kuni (2003) illustrates this concern in a multi-generational story. It is a cathartic narrative whose main purpose is to nurture and reconcile the painful memory for the hibakusha, but also for those who did not directly witness the events. The acceleration of climate change and Japan's new energy mix are also of growing concern, conjuring up an image of a Japan on the brink of extinction and ravaged by disasters. Two examples illustrate the epidermal nature of these issues. In 2014, the famous gourmet manga Oishinbo (1983) tackled the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster head-on, highlighting the harmful effects on the environment and the people of the region, who suffered regular nosebleeds. These scenes clashed with the official discourse on the effects of the accident, so much so that Shinzo Abe directly condemned the manga [2], leading to the series' ongoing hiatus.

More recently, Makoto Shinkai's films have oscillated between neo-traditionalism and social conservatism, as in Tenki no Ko (2019). Maria Mihaela Grajdian has already pointed out that Mamoru Hosoda's films, by idealising concepts such as family, parenthood and masculinity, 'shows both that he understands the critical situation and that he does not regard it as his duty to offer alternative solutions, more in tune with the spirit of the 21st century' [3]. In Tenki no Ko, Shinkai is content with the same naive, depoliticising position: climate change and the disappearance of Japan under the sea are seen as inevitable natural phenomena, and the film prefers to focus on the fleeting happiness of a few teenagers from a purely individualistic, conservative perspective.

With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), Nintendo's flagship series has also taken up these themes anew. This is less a first exploration than an updated discourse. The Zelda games have always contained elements of shintō philosophy, contrasting Arthurian mythology with the typically Japanese depiction of environments, whether through non-human creatures, the abundance of islands – literal or figurative – or the sacred aspect of nature. Breath of the Wild depicted the world after a catastrophe and the restoration of nature, everlasting despite the scars left by disasters. Tears of the Kingdom is a direct reflection of this vision, by reversing the representation.

     Flowers of ruin: looking at micro-gardens

A variation on the theme of Majora's Mask (2000), Tears of the Kingdom also shows humanity on the brink of extinction. However, the tone is quite different. Whereas Majora's Mask was a journey into nihilism and the lack of communication that breaks down interpersonal relationships, Tears of the Kingdom explores the persistence of solidarity and the opening up of societies. Recontextualised, the world of Hyrule is a fable that sings of the resilience of nations in the face of natural disaster. Even within the first few hours of surface exploration, the world is teeming with life, yet societies live hidden away, sheltered from the elements. There is something charming about re-exploring a world that is decidedly optimistic, but still a little fearful, like the first buds of spring breaking through the snow.

Rather tellingly, the Zonai Ruins are still harbouring life: the sky islands are still inhabited by birds, while the debris that has fallen to the ground is home to plants that normally only grow in the heavens. Despite these chaotic elements, however, the world of Hyrule is somewhat more domesticated. The roads are well trodden by travellers, stables provide regular resting places, and construction materials are plentiful along the roadsides. Tears of the Kingdom has swapped the 'miniature plant garden' and 'garden in a box' (hakoniwa) [4] for a lusher shrubland. Hyrule is shaped by the collaborative work of its inhabitants, and their presence can be seen in the little accents that dot the landscape: Zelda and Magda's little flower garden, or Pyper's glittering tree, are clear signs that humans have made the environment their own, creating a symbiotic relationship between society and nature.

Tears of the Kingdom is, in a way, an ode to primordialism and man's passivity when it comes to influencing nature. Unlike Breath of the Wild, where the equipment forged by humans quickly becomes the most powerful, the player can make do with items found on monsters for most of the adventure. It's not until fairly late in the game that the shift occurs, when Zonai items can become more valuable. More generally, Tears of the Kingdom allows the player to contemplate the world and its inhabitants through tighter resource management, at least in the first few dozen hours. But even when Link is well equipped, nature is not easily tamed, as the introduction of world bosses keeps exploration somewhat terrifying or majestic. The exploration of the Depths, while often undermined by visual monotony, illustrates the sinister nature of what crawls beneath the gaze of the living, and the importance of ruin, not just of human civilisations, but of a world tainted by corruption (kegare).

     A melancholic sky: fall and burden as elements of game design

This aesthetic owes a great deal to the vision of Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Daiki Iwamoto, given that they apprehend the sky through the act of falling. There is a certain tragic irony to this Upheaval, as it is used to discover the reasons for the fall of the Zonai. As in Skyward Sword (2011), the exploration of the skies begins with a long fall. But the world of Skyward Sword allows for much easier exploration thanks to its bird mounts [5], whereas in Tears of the Kingdom Link is constantly being pulled down by gravity. He is destined to fall, and this sense of heaviness is present throughout the game: in particular, the interactions with the various inhabitants of the world emphasise their insecurity and, by extension, their fallibility. Despite the humour and joviality that runs through the dialogue, all the characters are undermined by self-imposed desires and missions. Addison continues to hold signs for endless days, Reede is forced to admit that his vision of tranquillity is no longer sustainable, and Penn struggles with his fear of actively participating in field investigation. There is something deeply human about them, and Link emerges in turn as a mythologised figure as he performs heroic deeds and helps others. In this respect, it is striking that everyone knows his name, but his identity sometimes remains a mystery.

This philosophy no doubt helps to explain other design elements and Fujibayashi's characteristic wandering. Tears of the Kingdom opts for a more scripted progression, with the player openly encouraged to help the various tribes. Each storyline is fairly engaging and recontextualises nicely the characters met in Breath of the Wild – with the exception of the Goron quest, which neutralises its anti-capitalist themes far too quickly. The main quests in each region are refreshingly varied, with some unexpected sequences such as the defence of Gerudo Town. The downside of this approach is the disappointment of the dungeons. These are particularly mediocre, a simple series of puzzles inferior to those in the Shrines. The same structure as The Minish Cap (2004) is found in Tears of the Kingdom, with an inability to think holistically about design. These sequences do a poor job of incorporating the great freedom of Link's powers; it would probably have been more interesting to emphasise the oppressive aspect of confined spaces and a survival approach, for example by removing the map in dungeons.

As it stands, the non-linearity of the title works against many of the design ideas. In addition to the identical flashbacks for each Sage, the dungeons do not adapt well to the upscaling that players experience as they accumulate more resources and power. For the most part, the dungeons restrict the new skills unlocked, rather than showcasing them as other mini-dungeons and celestial islands can, where Ultrahand shines very brightly. The Fire Temple is perhaps the only exception, as it is possible to completely ignore the various puzzles if the player has enough resources and has been diligent in their exploration. On the other hand, the non-linearity works well with the side quests, as it feels genuinely satisfying when an NPC tells Link that he has already completed the mission he was given. Similarly, the Proving Grounds Shrines benefit greatly from player progression and a larger heart pool, turning a careful experience into a speed challenge, while the other Shrines allow for creative expression for players familiar with the advanced grammar of the various powers and machines.

Perhaps more importantly, it is the combat that suffers greatly from this approach: while Tears of the Kingdom features much larger waves of enemies, the system remains clunky. The combat system is designed for duels rather than large-scale melee, and the lack of ergonomics often renders Fuse unusable in battle. Similarly, the Sages' avatars are a welcome touch, emphasising the fact that Link is no longer alone, but the implementation is so unpleasant that it is easier to ignore their powers outside of certain puzzles. To a certain extent, the heaviness of the game and the idea of the fall serve to underline a contemplation of the world and its societies, provided one is receptive to Fujibayashi and Iwamoto's themes, but at the expense of the gameplay and the fluidity of the experience.

     To live is to atone for one's sins: neo-traditionalism in Japan

Breath of the Wild had already begun to return to a very Japanese aesthetic, a trend that continues in Tears of the Kingdom. Certain elements are obvious: Kakariko Village retains the same visual appearance, and the soundtrack features many more Asian elements – 'Master Kohga Battle' makes more use of the shamisen, and the 'Main Theme' is largely driven by an erhu, to name just two examples. Thematically, the universe more readily embraces East Asian mythology. Dragons are explicitly Japanese, as are the quest for immortality, magatama, the constant search for home (ibasho), and the genealogical links between humanity and the gods – the royalty of Hyrule is descended from the union of Zonai and humans, just as Emperor Jimmu is described as a descendant of Amaterasu.

Strikingly, the noble female characters in Tears of the Kingdom are all marked by the Japanese stain of tragedy, whether through the burden of blood, motherhood or the sins for which they take responsibility. The thematic development and presentation of Rauru and Sonia form a striking parallel with Izanagi and Izanami. As parental figures, the royal couple represents a familial and affective ideal, albeit a highly traditional one. Despite its seemingly progressive themes, Tears of the Kingdom revels in social stagnation and a status quo that must be protected at all costs – the True Ending emphasises that the point was not just to defeat Ganondorf, but to preserve 'eternal peace' (eien no an'nei) [6]. Hyrule may have undergone a number of transformations since Breath of the Wild, but they have always occurred within continuities: clan leaders have changed, but only to be replaced by blood descendants. Similarly, the multicultural discourse is always tempered by the service that the different tribes provide to the Hylian royalty, according to a strict hierarchy.

Tears of the Kingdom is a parenthesis and a intermediary conclusion to the series. At the end of the adventure, Link returns the powers he used to explore the world. The gameplay of the title is designed to be a natural extension of the powers used in Breath of the Wild, increasing the creative and traversal possibilities. It is, however, a temporary experience; to the player, Tears of the Kingdom repeats the same old message: 'this is what I propose, and if you do not like it, so be it'. The title makes no concessions in its approach, to the point where it suffers structurally. Its extraordinary density may seem almost antiquated – but such has been Fujibayashi's legacy since The Minish Cap – and some will find the idea of the game providing bits and pieces of the solution to every puzzle heavy-handed.

Hyrule is still scarred by the damage of the Upheaval; there is no sign of the islands falling to the ground again, nor does Hyrule Castle. The Chasms are unlikely to close either, with only the Gloom gone. Mankind will have to learn to live with this new and distorted world. Like Japanese disaster fiction, Tears of the Kingdom looks to the future – to the resilience of the people – but it also reflects on the trauma that will not fade away: Kyōko Hayashi laments the inaction of institutions while the traces of destruction are still present in Japan, and the promise of the Sages at the very end of the game seems to be a response to this concern. Tears of the Kingdom guides the player's gaze almost relentlessly towards a contemplation of Japanese society in its environment, even if it means verging on the artificial, and whether or not this approach is welcomed is up to the player.

__________
[1] Kyōko Hayashi, 'To Rui, Once Again', tr. Margaret Mitsutani, in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 15-7, no. 3, 2017, p. 3.
[2] Justin McCurry, 'Gourmet manga stirs up storm after linking Fukushima to nosebleeds', in The Guardian, 22nd May 2014, consulted on 10th July 2023.
[3] Maria Mihaela Grajdian, 'Compassionate Neo-Traditionalism in Hosoda Mamoru’s Animation Movies', in Russian Japanology Review, vol. 3, no. 2, 2020, p. 148.
[4] Victor Moisan, Zelda : Le jardin et le monde, Façonnage, Lyon, 2021.
[5] On spatiality, the traversal aspect and the design of the sky and Skyloft, see 'Volume Five: The Dense Sky and Town', in Nintendo, Iwata Asks – The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, 2011.
[6] Note that the English translation conveys the original idea slightly differently, balancing Ganondorf's defeat with the idea of 'eternal peace'. The Japanese text reads: 「あの方たちが願ったのはつかまあ束の間ではなく永遠に続くハイラルの安寧。」Here, the comparison is much more focused on the ephemeral and the eternal, while the term 安寧 expresses both Hyrule's public peace and Zelda's inner tranquillity.

Review

I gave it a real shot, for 8 hours!

You can read my notes and thoughts here : https://twitter.com/han_tani2/status/1735187901296836666

Or read an essay in which I discuss TotK https://melodicambient.substack.com/p/why-ocarina-of-time-cant-be-recreated

The short version is: the game has its nice charming moments, I actually like the idea of janky physics dungeons and riding around on stuff. NPC designs are nice and some of the side quests looked interesting. But I hattteee the crafting stuff, it kind of ends up padding almost everything in the game out. There's also so much distraction, it feels like YouTube recommendations or TikTok...

Shitpost review

Zelda but if Miyamoto wasn't inspired by wandering the countryside as a kid but opening up Genshin enough times to get the 30 day login bonus

Genuinely the most exhausted I've felt after beating a fantasy adventure game, taking the crown from Dark Souls III.

If I were meaner I'd drop 1 star but I'd be remiss not to acknowledge the technical and presentation aspects of this. As fun as it is to compare it to Gmod, it far exceeds it in many practical ways, though of course not being nearly as deep.

I don't have the energy to list out everything detail by detail but I think what killed a lot of my enthusiasm which peaked in the 10-20 hour mark (thus, spent close to 40-60 with a sense of "is it over yet?") was just the sheer lack of ambition in shrines and general quest design. For a game so heavily built around its lego pieces it sure is scared to make the player put more than 2 pieces together (and if it does, it leaves out a preassembled example 9/10 times.). There's little way to tell whether or not the shrine you're entering is worth your time, an easy "avoid" is if it's right alongside the main roads of the map, but even near the edge of the map or more far away regions I found the game reminding me for the 3rd time post-tutorial how to throw an item or how to stack objects. Late into the game I just started skipping shrines wholesale, unless they were convenient for fast travel i.e. in the sky islands or mazes or I just had a REALLY good feeling they'd be at least decent.

In many ways the Zonai stuff was the most consistently disappointing to me, with much of the slog of the game wrapping around to it. I scraped by with only 5 notches of battery(!!!) for 90% of my playthrough and felt like I had more than enough breathing room for any puzzles, bordering on bypassing many outright due to headroom. I said this shortly after leaving the great sky island, that they should have doubled charge capacity as a baseline; and I think they agree because any zonai task that looks like it'd ask for more also has batteries lying around to offset anyone who has an unupgraded charge.

By the time I wanted the game to be over it just kept sending me on absurdly long fetch quests. It might sound silly but do you know how often I completed a temple or major questline and thought "man I could've replayed Ico"? A lot more than just once lol. That's a new feeling for me really, in regards to singleplayer games; I may joke about it but I'm almost never serious if it's anything legitimate, but I really felt that here. In many ways I just don't think the game respects the players time, and I don't mean in an endearing / engaging way like you'd see in Demon's Souls or Faster Than Light. It doesn't help by this point it repeats the shit out of bosses in a way that would make Elden Ring blush, and unlike Elden Ring there's no easy way to tell if what you're doing is underpowered vs you based on map location; it feels arbitrary,

Really where this game shines is.. where most 3D Zeldas shine, which is the world and characters. and to that end it's very good imo. The music is also mostly lovely. I'm now too tired to write more, kind of like the average shrine quality walking from the outer tenth of the map inwards.

this is the worst kind of direct sequel. gameplay loop is essentially identical but it has almost nothing to do with the previous game story/continuity-wise.

nintendo has always been allergic to lore but there is no time this has been more obvious than this time around.

they completely tapped out on what was good and what was bad about botw and just made the same game with some added crafting mechanics that can be fun but arent very practical to the core gameplay.