I spent 250 hours playing Tears of the Kingdom over that last month, and I simply have to give it props for that alone. However, I am coming out with overall mixed feelings. I love Breath of the Wild as many others do, and this game presents copious amounts of BOTW content which is great but ultimately felt a bit disappointing. I have a lot of thoughts on this game so I probably will try to break my thoughts both positive and negative into segments

Abilities

I think the abilities in this game are great and definitely exceed those of BOTW. Ultra hand is ultimately what the game is built around and is a lot of fun to play with in the overworld, dungeons, and puzzles. It pairs really well with recall as you can manipulate time to make your creations work more effectively or return to a more advantageous place. Ascend is just a great tool for navigating caves, solving puzzles, and even fighting bosses. It fits in very well with the new Hyrule. Fuse is the only ability I am a bit iffy on as after the first few hours of the game I felt like I was doing kinda the same thing as BOTW as far as weapons go. I would kill strong enemies, take their weapon, and then do the added step of fusing their horn or whatever onto the weapon. This process is fine. I have no problems with weapon durability. Fusing just started to feel like an added chore as the game went on though. There is cool stuff you can do with it like fusing a shield with a zonai sled which I did enjoy.

Story

I like the overall plot of this game. It is a really neat Zelda story that feels pretty unique in a lot of ways especially when it comes to the Zonai and the story of Rauru and Ganondorf. The cutscene “memories” of this game were always really fun to stumble upon and watch. I love the journey that Zelda herself goes on in this game and some of the major events of the story are super neat. I especially love that the light dragon is visible from the very start of the game on the great sky island. I will say though the individual sages and their stories started to give me big time BOTW deja vu. I mean the premise of the story is strikingly similar. “A battle was lost a long time ago and its now on you to go to each major area and gather the strength of the past to rectify that loss.” Idk a little weird to me but overall I think its got a great plot with great individual moments. I will say though I think I like the characters and maybe even the overall plot of BOTW more than this game.

Exploration and the moment to moment

This is probably the most important topic of this review because it is what the game is based around. Exploring is what I spent the majority of my time doing in this game and is where these last two Zeldas make their shine. Unfortunately for me though, this is where TotK really struggles. It will never be as fun to explore the same world the second time around and I definitely felt that throughout my playthrough. There are definitely lots and lots of changes on the surface map which I appreciate and enjoyed investigating. I appreciate that there are new koroks puzzles, new shrine locations, and new caves. Caves especially shake things up a lot and are probably my favorite addition to the exploration of the world. However, I do wish there were more big and unique caves like the one under Hyrule Castle. The most obvious expansions to TotK are the sky and the depths which too often felt like hollow additions. The idea of the sky islands is very neat and there are some great ones like the Hebra sky area and the Zora sky area. However, the majority of these islands are recreations of other islands with slight tweaks. It feels underwhelming to continue to come across the same shrine quest islands with a rauru’s blessing over and over again. The depths have the same sort of problem. Sure it appears to be this huge new area with lots of things to explore, but for the most part it breaks down to a cycle of yiga camp, abandoned mine, and abandoned facility which gets boring. I still enjoyed exploring the sky and the depths, but it never felt like the most fresh experience in the world.

Shrines and Dungeons

For some reason, shrines are kind of like a downgrade in this game. It feels like they should have been much better because of the potential to do way more interesting stuff with the abilities in this game, but most of these shrines felt very easy to solve and surface-level. A few really challenged me. A certain boating one comes to mind, but, overall, they were often not very memorable. I do like that they incorporated proving grounds shrines in though. It is always fun to tackle the combat in a unique way in those shrines. The dungeons however are more of a mixed bag. The unique theming of all the dungeons goes a long way and makes it much more fun to explore them. The wind and water temples were great examples of this. However, that is kind of part of the problem though. You really are just kinda exploring these dungeons. In the past, dungeons were a great change of pace to the main gameplay loop meant to challenge you with some tight and hand-crafted Zelda puzzles. This game continues the trend of the dungeon being an extension of the main game which is made worse in a game with 200 hours of content where the player is in need of these changes of pace. I do think the main quests leading up the dungeons are a lot more fun in TotK though.

Final thoughts

What happened to Kass or the great institution of shrine quests? Shrine quests were one of my favorite things to do in BOTW and in this game there just “bring crystal to shrine.” This was such a disappointment for me and that is why it really bothers me when people say this game took “BotW and improved it in EVERY way.” I like this game quite a bit and think it brings a lot to the table but there are a lot of things Breath of the Wild does better. Not to mention sage abilities which can be really annoying in this game whereas in BotW they are always helpful. In conclusion, my main problem with this game is that it is wayyyyyyy to much of a retread of Breath of the Wild. I get that it’s a direct sequel, but, from the very start of the game, the format of it all is so based in BotW that I can’t help but feel a bit let down. Overall though this is still a great game with lots of great moments, music, and experiences packed into it. Since I have been quite negative in this review ill list some of the things I really enjoyed: the wind temple’s boss went hard and I’m not just talking about its music, Tarrey Town returned in amazing fashion, restoring Lurelin was great, the final boss exceeded Botw’s for sure, Lookout Landing was a great base of operations, the return of the yiga was executed well, and Froxes are epic and cool