When I played Breath of the Wild five years ago, I was excited for the future of the series. Despite liking several of the older games more, there was so much potential in the new format. The chemistry system, physics, artstyle, and open world were crafted with such immaculate detail I was largely able to look past its many shortcomings. How Tears of the Kingdom addresses these is a double-edged sword. It has a lot of gameplay improvements that will make it difficult to go back to its predecessor. That’s what an iterative sequel should do. At the same time, it is impossible to review this game without reviewing Breath of the Wild. Both games look and play so similarly you would be forgiven for thinking the sequel was a glorified ROM hack. Keep this analogy in mind as you read. My review will be focused on discussing the additions and changes the sequel made, starting with the tutorial.
I’m not going to mince words. The Great Sky Island is the worst tutorial in any Zelda game I’ve ever played. I have two big reasons for stating this. Firstly, it goes on FOREVER. It makes the maligned intros of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword look tame. Those games also had the benefit of establishing important characters in Link’s adventure. It would be hard to care about Zelda in Skyward Sword if there wasn’t so much time spent forging a connection with her before she’s taken away. After Ganondorf is introduced in Tears of the Kingdom, however, I spent over THREE HOURS reaching the tutorial shrines, with my sole accomplice being a Zonai warrior with a cardboard personality. Simple plot and characters aren’t problems in and of themselves, but Breath of the Wild wasted far less time accomplishing the same goal.
Reason number two is a lack of freedom. The Great Plateau worked so well because it was an authentic taste of the open world to come. The tutorial shrines could be tackled in any order and the minimal amount of text boxes allowed me to acclimate to the mechanics at my own pace. I was trusted to figure things out. Not so on the Great Sky Island. There’s a lot of Zonai constructs offering gameplay tips, some optional and some not. This doesn’t work for Zelda newcomers or Breath of the Wild veterans. The former will be overwhelmed by the mechanics, especially Ultrahand, and the latter will just want to get a move-on. More baffling to me is that each shrine has to be visited in a set order. The island is shaped like a donut and obstacles must be traversed by using abilities obtained from the previous shrine. None of the freedom that comes after leaving the island is present here. I was so desperate to explore Hyrule that I actually missed the paraglider for a few hours. I also used Rewind to reach a mini Sky island and thought I was trapped. Admittedly, this was a stupid idea and I could have fast-traveled to escape, but I got so fed-up with not having the paraglider that I looked up where it was. What do you know, I was heading in the oposite direction! Nintendo, why would you put an ESSENTIAL traversal tool in the middle of an OPEN WORLD???
As irritating as it was, the tutorial does not change the fact that Link’s abilities are a considerable improvement over the ones in Breath of the Wild. Ultrahand is what Magnesis should have been and then some. You can pick up any loose objects and Zonai devices, and then construct whatever your imagination can muster by supergluing them together. Nintendo should be applauded for allowing objects to be stuck together almost anywhere. It does mean mistakes are bound to happen, but the skill ceiling wouldn’t be nearly as high if you could only construct vehicles in a specific way. Admittedly, I only used Ultrahand when I needed to because I didn’t find Autobuild until much later and building a vehicle without that was not always worth the effort, but overall the system was a brilliant way of expanding on the physics-based gameplay.
Fuse is equally brilliant and my personal favorite ability. It single-handedly solves two major issues I had with Breath of the Wild: the weapon durability and the lack of utility for many inventory items beyond upgrading armor. Weapon durability was the hottest topic surrounding Breath of the Wild’s gameplay. I personally thought it was a good system, but suffered from diminshing returns. As the game went on, my inventory became bigger, but my weapons were still fairly brittle despite their higher damage numbers. It made me not want to engage with most enemies because I didn’t want to break my best weapons. Here, almost every weapon has a weak base damage value and the idea is to decide which monster parts or elemental materials you want to fuse onto the weapon to make it stronger. Weapons with strong base damage are few and far between. Even then, they almost always come with a trade-off. For example, bone weapons, which were useless in Breath of the Wild, now have much higher base damage to compensate for their pitiful durability, functioning like glass weapons in an RPG. Gloom swords obtained from Phantom Ganon inflict gloom on the player, necessitating meals that recover those hearts after use.
Whoever conceived the idea to fuse materials onto arrows is a genius. This eliminates the need for the previous game’s specific arrows, as your entire materials inventory now serves that purpose. I can only speak for myself, but in Breath of the Wild, I was constantly running low on arrows I wanted to use. In the sequel, only normal arrows can be looted, making them easier to stockpile, and fusing specific materials will achieve the effect of the ice, fire, shock, or bomb arrows from before, along with several new ones. This flexibility led to me using materials I never touched in the previous game, like Chuchu jelly and Keese eyeballs. However, being forced to select the materials for every single arrow breaks the flow of combat. Why not have the game remember the arrow you fired last time and give the option to switch back to a normal arrow like in Breath of the Wild? There also needed to be a faster way to select specific materials. Even with the sorting options, it takes way too long to cycle through the whole inventory. It’s mainly a problem when you want to use a material you haven’t touched recently. A personalized list of favorite materials that appeared alongside the general list would have been perfect for me.
I don’t have nearly as much to say about Ascend and Rewind, but they’re still great tools. The former is particularly special for how it asks the player to examine 3D space differently from the average video game. It is both goofy and exciting when Link is ascending for like five full seconds and I have no idea what’s at the surface. Its limitations on height and surface flatness also ensure it doesn’t overshadow climbing like Revali’s Gale did. Rewind is perhaps the least interesting, but its applications in motion-based puzzles and specific mini-bosses cement it as more worthwhile than Stasis. In other words, my least favorite ability in Tears of the Kingdom is more useful than the best ability from Breath of the Wild.
With all of the abilities discussed, let’s move on to the shrines. Note that this is coming from someone who completed all 272 shrines across Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In the former, they were a mixed bag. For every good shrine that iterated on a puzzle idea, there were at least three mediocre or bad ones. Given that there’s more shrines in the sequel, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised little was done to address this. Puzzle shrines are still inconsistent with how much effort seems to have gone into them. There are even shrines dedicated to teaching basic combat actions like shield parries, throwing objects, and shooting a bow. I want you to think about that for a second. Nintendo didn’t trust its players to figure out how to shoot a bow! What happened to Breath of the Wild’s approach of combining these tips into a single shrine players were unlikely to miss early on? Ideally, there would be no such tutorials, but I’ll take one that overstays its welcome over several that only exist to bloat the shrine count. The sole exception to all of this was the combat shrines. Instead of fighting the same guardian robot 20 times with a variable amount of health, these shrines have unique layouts with deviously-placed enemies and hazards. Even better is how you are stripped of your equipment during the trial, meaning you have to work with what the designers give you. Like the previous game’s Eventide Island and Trials of the Sword, these challenges had to be crafted with a naked Link in mind, eliminating the possibility of players cheesing them with overpowered weapons or not having enough resources to win. I always felt the combat was at its best when you are scavenging for weapons to survive.
Nintendo seems to have only taken a half-step towards addressing the complaints about shrines, and the dungeons are no better. They have stronger build-ups, look distinct from each other, and have unique bosses, thank goodness, but they all follow the same structure as Divine Beasts. This structure is not bad by itself, but the repetition, combined with how short every temple is, makes them disappointing. I’m not even sure these temples are better than Divine Beasts, as I found most of the puzzles and bosses here to be a cakewalk. The detailed map and lack of small keys means the spatial reasoning required of players in classic Zelda dungeons is mostly absent. Therefore, if the puzzles don’t pick up the slack, dungeons feel unfinished. As underwhelming as the Divine Beasts were, I firmly believe they had more interesting puzzles. At least you had to understand the consequences of manipulating the controls for each one. The temples here don’t have a unique gimmick like that, except for the Water Temple, but that also has the most braindead puzzles.
I’m torn on the world design. For something advertised as expanding the scope of Hyrule, the Sky really feels like an afterthought. The tutorial island is actually the largest Sky island, which wouldn’t be a problem if the others were interesting. Instead, Nintendo mostly just added a few skydiving challenges, copy-pasted a crystal fetch quest in every region, and called it a day. It’s barely better than how it was in Skyward Sword, which is a low bar to clear. In contrast, finding a lightroot in the Depths after stumbling around in the dark was consistently rewarding. Since it’s the same size as the surface, mapping out the Depths is practically a game in and of itself. It is a bit lame though that the only extrinsic rewards unique to this area are Poes, Zonaite, and the spoils of a copy-pasted mini-boss. Poes are used as currency for a specific chain of shops that could easily have been part of every other shop in the game. Like, why not just have those items in other shops and use Rupees instead? Using them for navigating the Depths isn’t a good counter-argument because brightbloom seeds accomplish the same thing in a much better way. Zonaite is used for buying crystals to upgrade the battery for Zonai devices. If you like messing around with Ultrahand, this will be a worthwhile investment. I didn’t start upgrading it until after I completed about 90 shrines and most of the temples, so while I was largely able to make do with the default amount, it’s still a nice inclusion. One more question about the Depths though:
WHY ARE THE DUNGEON BOSSES ALSO FOUND HERE?! This means they are not special, just like every other enemy in the game! WHY?! When I first saw this, I incorrectly assumed they could be found BEFORE exploring the dungeons and originally wrote this review with that belief in mind. I’m so thankful I was wrong. Imagine if you fought Twinrova from Ocarina of Time hours before the Spirit Temple, with no alterations between fights. It would spoil the surprise. Nevertheless, I still believe these rematches weren’t necessary. They just add repetition to a game that already has too much of that.
This repetition is most abundant on Hyrule’s Surface, which should be a crime considering that’s where Breath of the Wild took place. The caves, for example, were fun at first, but they did little to stand out from each other, losing their appeal after the 10th one. The Bubbul gems in each one were also completely unnecessary, as they’re only used for one shop that doesn’t offer enough useful items to justify its existence. More enemies is great, but they’re reused just as incessantly as Breath of the Wild. Once you’ve beaten your fourth Lynel or Gleeok, subsequent encounters become a chore. It’s nice to see that Tarrey Town expanded its construction business, but repeatedly holding up a sign for Addison gets old fast. The Korok challenges ran themselves into the ground before 100 seeds, let alone 1,000. The escort missions are particularly dull and that same concept is used to unlock the fairy fountains. Why are the fairies in different locations anyway? Having them all next to stables robs the sense of mystery they had in Breath of the Wild, where only a diligent explorer could find them.
No need to worry about story spoilers in this next paragraph. I’ve carefully written it to avoid any details that weren’t shown off in the trailers.
I wasn’t planning to mention the story since most Zelda games have the same one, but this one is so underwhelming I have to make an exception. To start with the positives, the tone is more epic than last time, which is a better fit for a game about saving the world. Matthew Mercer was also a perfect choice to voice Ganondorf and the final battle with him did not disappoint like the last game. Sadly, everything else sucks. For one, the story is hidden away in memories that can be uncovered out of order. Breath of the Wild also did this, but it was much more forgivable since those cutscenes did not spoil important plot details. They were just focused around Zelda’s relationship with Link and her journey of self-discovery. It was flavor text that nicely complimented Link’s journey in the present. Tears of the Kingdom, however, tries to tell a typical Zelda story through these memories and not only does the nonlinearity make it easy for plot twists to be ruined, but the memories add to a long list of moments where characters explain the same events over and over and over. The ending also undermines the most intersting idea the writers had. Unforgivable considering how effortlessly Nintendo nailed similar moments in past games.
Going into Tears of the Kingdom, I was optimistic Nintendo would find a way to make the recycled map and assets interesting. In several ways, they did. But I don’t believe there were enough alterations to Hyrule. I’m not a huge fan of Majora’s Mask, but it did a far better job recycling assets and I will always respect it for not repeating Ocarina of Time’s formula. But even when Nintendo did go back to that formula with Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword, they still reimagined Hyrule with a new layout and artstyle. Heck, if you want an example of a reused map done right, just look at A Link Between Worlds. It brought new ideas to the series like merging into walls and renting items, which were paired alongside dungeons that reimagined old ideas. The resulting overworld was both familiar and fresh. The reason I don’t feel that in this title is because I found myself doing a lot of the same things from Breath of the Wild, and I was rarely incentivized to change that approach.
Tears of the Kingdom being so familiar despite six years of development is proof enough for me that it is not only not worth $70, but a sign Nintendo needs to scale back future Zelda games. Let’s be honest, any other company that put a similarly mixed effort into remixing old content would be accused of laziness. For all the problems the older Zelda games may have had, it really hits home how much I yearn for their comparatively smaller scope. Just think about how dense the map would feel if every region had its own dungeon, inhabitants, and music. That’s one of the many things I and lots of other players love about Zelda. Obviously, the series has come a long way since its inception and ignoring that evolution would be unwise. Nintendo should continue to build on their open-world design, just like they did here, but the size of the map should be correlated with the amount of unique discoveries. Dark Souls and Hollow Knight both proved to me that such a world is possible in the modern gaming landscape, but even they did not offer a true open world. I don’t know if an open world that dense with unique discoveries exists or even will exist. If I find it, however, you will know, because it will probably be the best game I ever play.
I’m not going to mince words. The Great Sky Island is the worst tutorial in any Zelda game I’ve ever played. I have two big reasons for stating this. Firstly, it goes on FOREVER. It makes the maligned intros of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword look tame. Those games also had the benefit of establishing important characters in Link’s adventure. It would be hard to care about Zelda in Skyward Sword if there wasn’t so much time spent forging a connection with her before she’s taken away. After Ganondorf is introduced in Tears of the Kingdom, however, I spent over THREE HOURS reaching the tutorial shrines, with my sole accomplice being a Zonai warrior with a cardboard personality. Simple plot and characters aren’t problems in and of themselves, but Breath of the Wild wasted far less time accomplishing the same goal.
Reason number two is a lack of freedom. The Great Plateau worked so well because it was an authentic taste of the open world to come. The tutorial shrines could be tackled in any order and the minimal amount of text boxes allowed me to acclimate to the mechanics at my own pace. I was trusted to figure things out. Not so on the Great Sky Island. There’s a lot of Zonai constructs offering gameplay tips, some optional and some not. This doesn’t work for Zelda newcomers or Breath of the Wild veterans. The former will be overwhelmed by the mechanics, especially Ultrahand, and the latter will just want to get a move-on. More baffling to me is that each shrine has to be visited in a set order. The island is shaped like a donut and obstacles must be traversed by using abilities obtained from the previous shrine. None of the freedom that comes after leaving the island is present here. I was so desperate to explore Hyrule that I actually missed the paraglider for a few hours. I also used Rewind to reach a mini Sky island and thought I was trapped. Admittedly, this was a stupid idea and I could have fast-traveled to escape, but I got so fed-up with not having the paraglider that I looked up where it was. What do you know, I was heading in the oposite direction! Nintendo, why would you put an ESSENTIAL traversal tool in the middle of an OPEN WORLD???
As irritating as it was, the tutorial does not change the fact that Link’s abilities are a considerable improvement over the ones in Breath of the Wild. Ultrahand is what Magnesis should have been and then some. You can pick up any loose objects and Zonai devices, and then construct whatever your imagination can muster by supergluing them together. Nintendo should be applauded for allowing objects to be stuck together almost anywhere. It does mean mistakes are bound to happen, but the skill ceiling wouldn’t be nearly as high if you could only construct vehicles in a specific way. Admittedly, I only used Ultrahand when I needed to because I didn’t find Autobuild until much later and building a vehicle without that was not always worth the effort, but overall the system was a brilliant way of expanding on the physics-based gameplay.
Fuse is equally brilliant and my personal favorite ability. It single-handedly solves two major issues I had with Breath of the Wild: the weapon durability and the lack of utility for many inventory items beyond upgrading armor. Weapon durability was the hottest topic surrounding Breath of the Wild’s gameplay. I personally thought it was a good system, but suffered from diminshing returns. As the game went on, my inventory became bigger, but my weapons were still fairly brittle despite their higher damage numbers. It made me not want to engage with most enemies because I didn’t want to break my best weapons. Here, almost every weapon has a weak base damage value and the idea is to decide which monster parts or elemental materials you want to fuse onto the weapon to make it stronger. Weapons with strong base damage are few and far between. Even then, they almost always come with a trade-off. For example, bone weapons, which were useless in Breath of the Wild, now have much higher base damage to compensate for their pitiful durability, functioning like glass weapons in an RPG. Gloom swords obtained from Phantom Ganon inflict gloom on the player, necessitating meals that recover those hearts after use.
Whoever conceived the idea to fuse materials onto arrows is a genius. This eliminates the need for the previous game’s specific arrows, as your entire materials inventory now serves that purpose. I can only speak for myself, but in Breath of the Wild, I was constantly running low on arrows I wanted to use. In the sequel, only normal arrows can be looted, making them easier to stockpile, and fusing specific materials will achieve the effect of the ice, fire, shock, or bomb arrows from before, along with several new ones. This flexibility led to me using materials I never touched in the previous game, like Chuchu jelly and Keese eyeballs. However, being forced to select the materials for every single arrow breaks the flow of combat. Why not have the game remember the arrow you fired last time and give the option to switch back to a normal arrow like in Breath of the Wild? There also needed to be a faster way to select specific materials. Even with the sorting options, it takes way too long to cycle through the whole inventory. It’s mainly a problem when you want to use a material you haven’t touched recently. A personalized list of favorite materials that appeared alongside the general list would have been perfect for me.
I don’t have nearly as much to say about Ascend and Rewind, but they’re still great tools. The former is particularly special for how it asks the player to examine 3D space differently from the average video game. It is both goofy and exciting when Link is ascending for like five full seconds and I have no idea what’s at the surface. Its limitations on height and surface flatness also ensure it doesn’t overshadow climbing like Revali’s Gale did. Rewind is perhaps the least interesting, but its applications in motion-based puzzles and specific mini-bosses cement it as more worthwhile than Stasis. In other words, my least favorite ability in Tears of the Kingdom is more useful than the best ability from Breath of the Wild.
With all of the abilities discussed, let’s move on to the shrines. Note that this is coming from someone who completed all 272 shrines across Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In the former, they were a mixed bag. For every good shrine that iterated on a puzzle idea, there were at least three mediocre or bad ones. Given that there’s more shrines in the sequel, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised little was done to address this. Puzzle shrines are still inconsistent with how much effort seems to have gone into them. There are even shrines dedicated to teaching basic combat actions like shield parries, throwing objects, and shooting a bow. I want you to think about that for a second. Nintendo didn’t trust its players to figure out how to shoot a bow! What happened to Breath of the Wild’s approach of combining these tips into a single shrine players were unlikely to miss early on? Ideally, there would be no such tutorials, but I’ll take one that overstays its welcome over several that only exist to bloat the shrine count. The sole exception to all of this was the combat shrines. Instead of fighting the same guardian robot 20 times with a variable amount of health, these shrines have unique layouts with deviously-placed enemies and hazards. Even better is how you are stripped of your equipment during the trial, meaning you have to work with what the designers give you. Like the previous game’s Eventide Island and Trials of the Sword, these challenges had to be crafted with a naked Link in mind, eliminating the possibility of players cheesing them with overpowered weapons or not having enough resources to win. I always felt the combat was at its best when you are scavenging for weapons to survive.
Nintendo seems to have only taken a half-step towards addressing the complaints about shrines, and the dungeons are no better. They have stronger build-ups, look distinct from each other, and have unique bosses, thank goodness, but they all follow the same structure as Divine Beasts. This structure is not bad by itself, but the repetition, combined with how short every temple is, makes them disappointing. I’m not even sure these temples are better than Divine Beasts, as I found most of the puzzles and bosses here to be a cakewalk. The detailed map and lack of small keys means the spatial reasoning required of players in classic Zelda dungeons is mostly absent. Therefore, if the puzzles don’t pick up the slack, dungeons feel unfinished. As underwhelming as the Divine Beasts were, I firmly believe they had more interesting puzzles. At least you had to understand the consequences of manipulating the controls for each one. The temples here don’t have a unique gimmick like that, except for the Water Temple, but that also has the most braindead puzzles.
I’m torn on the world design. For something advertised as expanding the scope of Hyrule, the Sky really feels like an afterthought. The tutorial island is actually the largest Sky island, which wouldn’t be a problem if the others were interesting. Instead, Nintendo mostly just added a few skydiving challenges, copy-pasted a crystal fetch quest in every region, and called it a day. It’s barely better than how it was in Skyward Sword, which is a low bar to clear. In contrast, finding a lightroot in the Depths after stumbling around in the dark was consistently rewarding. Since it’s the same size as the surface, mapping out the Depths is practically a game in and of itself. It is a bit lame though that the only extrinsic rewards unique to this area are Poes, Zonaite, and the spoils of a copy-pasted mini-boss. Poes are used as currency for a specific chain of shops that could easily have been part of every other shop in the game. Like, why not just have those items in other shops and use Rupees instead? Using them for navigating the Depths isn’t a good counter-argument because brightbloom seeds accomplish the same thing in a much better way. Zonaite is used for buying crystals to upgrade the battery for Zonai devices. If you like messing around with Ultrahand, this will be a worthwhile investment. I didn’t start upgrading it until after I completed about 90 shrines and most of the temples, so while I was largely able to make do with the default amount, it’s still a nice inclusion. One more question about the Depths though:
WHY ARE THE DUNGEON BOSSES ALSO FOUND HERE?! This means they are not special, just like every other enemy in the game! WHY?! When I first saw this, I incorrectly assumed they could be found BEFORE exploring the dungeons and originally wrote this review with that belief in mind. I’m so thankful I was wrong. Imagine if you fought Twinrova from Ocarina of Time hours before the Spirit Temple, with no alterations between fights. It would spoil the surprise. Nevertheless, I still believe these rematches weren’t necessary. They just add repetition to a game that already has too much of that.
This repetition is most abundant on Hyrule’s Surface, which should be a crime considering that’s where Breath of the Wild took place. The caves, for example, were fun at first, but they did little to stand out from each other, losing their appeal after the 10th one. The Bubbul gems in each one were also completely unnecessary, as they’re only used for one shop that doesn’t offer enough useful items to justify its existence. More enemies is great, but they’re reused just as incessantly as Breath of the Wild. Once you’ve beaten your fourth Lynel or Gleeok, subsequent encounters become a chore. It’s nice to see that Tarrey Town expanded its construction business, but repeatedly holding up a sign for Addison gets old fast. The Korok challenges ran themselves into the ground before 100 seeds, let alone 1,000. The escort missions are particularly dull and that same concept is used to unlock the fairy fountains. Why are the fairies in different locations anyway? Having them all next to stables robs the sense of mystery they had in Breath of the Wild, where only a diligent explorer could find them.
No need to worry about story spoilers in this next paragraph. I’ve carefully written it to avoid any details that weren’t shown off in the trailers.
I wasn’t planning to mention the story since most Zelda games have the same one, but this one is so underwhelming I have to make an exception. To start with the positives, the tone is more epic than last time, which is a better fit for a game about saving the world. Matthew Mercer was also a perfect choice to voice Ganondorf and the final battle with him did not disappoint like the last game. Sadly, everything else sucks. For one, the story is hidden away in memories that can be uncovered out of order. Breath of the Wild also did this, but it was much more forgivable since those cutscenes did not spoil important plot details. They were just focused around Zelda’s relationship with Link and her journey of self-discovery. It was flavor text that nicely complimented Link’s journey in the present. Tears of the Kingdom, however, tries to tell a typical Zelda story through these memories and not only does the nonlinearity make it easy for plot twists to be ruined, but the memories add to a long list of moments where characters explain the same events over and over and over. The ending also undermines the most intersting idea the writers had. Unforgivable considering how effortlessly Nintendo nailed similar moments in past games.
Going into Tears of the Kingdom, I was optimistic Nintendo would find a way to make the recycled map and assets interesting. In several ways, they did. But I don’t believe there were enough alterations to Hyrule. I’m not a huge fan of Majora’s Mask, but it did a far better job recycling assets and I will always respect it for not repeating Ocarina of Time’s formula. But even when Nintendo did go back to that formula with Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword, they still reimagined Hyrule with a new layout and artstyle. Heck, if you want an example of a reused map done right, just look at A Link Between Worlds. It brought new ideas to the series like merging into walls and renting items, which were paired alongside dungeons that reimagined old ideas. The resulting overworld was both familiar and fresh. The reason I don’t feel that in this title is because I found myself doing a lot of the same things from Breath of the Wild, and I was rarely incentivized to change that approach.
Tears of the Kingdom being so familiar despite six years of development is proof enough for me that it is not only not worth $70, but a sign Nintendo needs to scale back future Zelda games. Let’s be honest, any other company that put a similarly mixed effort into remixing old content would be accused of laziness. For all the problems the older Zelda games may have had, it really hits home how much I yearn for their comparatively smaller scope. Just think about how dense the map would feel if every region had its own dungeon, inhabitants, and music. That’s one of the many things I and lots of other players love about Zelda. Obviously, the series has come a long way since its inception and ignoring that evolution would be unwise. Nintendo should continue to build on their open-world design, just like they did here, but the size of the map should be correlated with the amount of unique discoveries. Dark Souls and Hollow Knight both proved to me that such a world is possible in the modern gaming landscape, but even they did not offer a true open world. I don’t know if an open world that dense with unique discoveries exists or even will exist. If I find it, however, you will know, because it will probably be the best game I ever play.
3 Comments
@Dunebot69 We’ll have to agree to disagree on Tears of the Kingdom. Contrary to what you might think, I like exploring just for the sake of it. It’s why I enjoyed the Depths despite a lot of it looking the same and me not getting much use out of the Poes. I definitely wasn’t creative with Ultrahand, but I’m glad you and many others were able to get so much enjoyment out of it. It’s a very subjective implementation. I just don’t see myself missing it if it were absent in the next game. The reason I got tired of exploring wasn’t because I didn’t find Ultrahand fun. I praised all of the new abilities after all. Rather, it’s because I was able to quickly predict what kind of challenges the game had in store, with very few exceptions. I was hoping for some more drastic changes to the map alongside the Sky, Depths, caves, and other miscellaneous additions. A good example of such a change in Tears is how each of the four temple regions had a specific problem you had to deal with. Not only that, but the things you did on the way to each temple were varied and interesting. They made for consistently epic build-ups. It is true that small changes in a world, like how Tarrey Town’s construction business grew considerably between games, can leave just as memorable of an impact as the big changes, if not more so. It comes down to what the game’s goals are. For me, exploration is the whole point of an open world game, let alone a Zelda game, and the recycled map just didn’t do it for me. The Depths were refreshingly alien and forboding, a place with its own rules and history. It was indifferent to the player’s presence, much like Breath of the Wild’s world during a first playthrough. That’s what I want to see more of.
That’s an interesting take. I was fine with predicting challenges because it felt satisfying to be correct and many of my predictions were based on my knowledge of the game. Even then, I couldn’t always predict due to how much more lively the map is.
Dunebot72
6 months ago
Now, this isn’t a dig at you, but I think the reason you found this game lackluster is due to a lack of creativity; your lack of creativity. Those “dull” escort missions are super fun to me, because I get to build the most ridiculous, borderline-Lovecraftian modes of transportation (and the little Stable Trotter kid does the Skull Kid dance… awwww…). I found traversing the Sky Islands and Depths to be fun due to all the weird stuff I built to help me. Finding secrets was more fun than ever due to the sheer amount of exploration methods available to me. Even the dungeons no longer restrict your abilities, allowing you to basically solve them however you want. Again, not a dig at you, but you may just be a bit more logical and straightforward in your thinking than I am (I’m a very abstract and creative person). Or maybe you just didn’t find it fun, I don’t know.
Other counterpoints:
— The Poes incentivize Depths exploration through an exclusive currency that only can be found down there. Plus, it’s not like you need any of the Poe items anyway.
— I’m pretty sure the dungeon bosses in the Depths don’t unlock until after you defeat them in their proper dungeons. In addition, they’re all more powerful down there and they allow you to rematch them so you can harvest their materials and Fuse them for ridiculously overpowered weapons.
— While the ending (I’m assuming you mean that Rewind moment) can seem cheap, I thought it still worked due to the truly EPIC payoff immediately afterwards, which acts as an effective bookend to the entire franchise (remember, Skyward Sword began with the original Link failing to catch Zelda as she fell from the sky…)
— I… didn’t think the temples were short at all lol. The Water Temple, yeah, but the rest of them were a decent length. The Lightning and Fire Temples in particular took me a while to figure out. They’re shorter than the dungeons in the longer games like Majora’s Mask or Twilight Princess, but they’re definitely longer than, say, The Wind Waker.
— The dungeons do have unique gimmicks. The Lightning Temple (best one) has cool mirror puzzles, the Fire Temple has complex minecart tracks (and you can fire Yunobo like a cannon), the Construct Factory is basically a sandbox for you to use Ultranhand and Zonai devices however you want (capped off by a robot boxing match in the Spirit Temple), the Wind Temple has those boats and a heavy focus on propellers and wind movement, and the Water “Temple” (the worst one) has low gravity (which is actually really damn cool). However, I do miss Small Keys :(
— I think the Shrines are a bit better here because they use Link’s new abilities more creatively, and we mutually agree that the Proving Grounds are good. However, if you don’t like Shrines, that’s fair.
— Ah, the tutorial. It’s pretty weak compared to the Great Plateau, but I still enjoyed it a lot. My first log on the game has me pointing out that I spent upwards of 4 hours on the Great Sky Island simply playing with Ultrahand and soaking up the beautiful atmosphere.
— Maybe Hyrule should be a bit smaller in the next game, but I found this game to be densely packed due to the sheer amount of secrets and resources. Then again, I didn’t have a problem with BotW’s world design, so that’s probably just another difference in personal preference between us.
— DARK SOULS (that’s how I always say it irl) is a little incomparable since it’s more of an RPG. However, I think TotK does exploration WAAAAY better since, most of the time in Dark Souls, I find myself wandering into new territory only to get eviscerated by a bunch of enemies or, if I manage to beat them, I’ll end up picking up some useless loot that pales in comparison to my overpowered weapons and armor that I already have and a pitiful amount of Souls that won’t help me level up anytime soon. I’ll then move on to the next section, get eviscerated again, and be sent back to my last Bonfire, now completely Soulless. Of course, I love Dark Souls, but I find the constant gameplay loop of TotK to be more satisfying.
That was fun! I love reading your reviews and sometimes disagreeing with them. May the Goddess smile upon you.