Breath of the Wild never did really blow me away. I certainly enjoyed it, and it's approach to open-world exploration was well executed - even if the rewards for doing missed the mark. I did not grow up with the series, and I initially wasn't even going to pick up Tears of the Kingdom until the very final launch trailer pushed me to just enough interest - and man am I glad I did.

As a direct sequel to BotW, TotK set out to improve upon every single aspect of its predecessor in every conceivable way, and I will do my best to break down each one of those things with as little spoilers as possible.

First off, the absolute biggest factor for me here was the exploration and more specifically, the Depths. An entire unmapped underground section that matches the size of Hyrule that is shrouded in darkness. As you explore it, you will find light-roots that not only serve to light up the surrounding area, but fill in the map as well. You better believe I got every last one for the satisfaction of filling in my map completely. There's a lot of great rewards, creepy monsters, and fun encounters to be had down there as well so it's absolutely worth dedicating time to.

Similarly, a handful of sky islands were also added flying above the surface. While their total surface area would probably make up around ~10% of the game map, there's a lot of cool things to be found up there as well. For the main world, there are certainly some new changes since BotW, however I admit the 6 years since the game's release has helped it feel fresh in my own mind.

One other thing they did to really spice up exploration is via the Fuse ability I mentioned earlier. Fuse allows you to stick anything you want onto your melee weapon, your shield, or your next arrow. If you want to attach a silver Lynel horn to your weapon to ramp up the damage, or a spring to your shield to bounce enemies who attack you away, or Keese wings to your arrow to make it fly further, these are all new possibilities. This is REALLY important because it fixes one of the biggest exploration problems I had with BotW. Due to weapon durability, it very quickly never felt worth it attacking monster camps because your reward was inevitably just a new weapon to replace what you probably just broke. But now, killing the monsters is just as much of a reward because their parts aren't relegated to just cooking elixirs - they improve your weapons too.

Another big factor for me is the shrines, and by extension your new powers that can be used to solve them. Shrines were present in the first game, but you didn't really have very interesting abilities that you could use to solve them outside of stasis. In TotK, your Ultra Hand, Recall, and to a lesser extent Fuse and Ascend are an excellent set of tools to solve them. Outside of the handful of combat-focused shrines (which usually have more creative solutions in mind), the variety of puzzles is incredible and make use of the great physics engine in the game. The Ultrahand ability also lets you make all manner of crazy contraptions from vehicles to robots to traps. It's not too cumbersome, especially when it comes to recreating past contraptions being very streamlined.

The final key aspect I want to touch on here is the story. If you remember the BotW story, you'll have to remind me because there wasn't too much interesting going on (and a lot of it was obscured in easily missable cutscenes). TotK's plot is a massive leap forward in quality. There is a lot of mystery to it, and while there are collectible "memory cutscenes" here too, they are very easy to find and tell a pretty interesting tale that features a couple of wild ideas. Most of the boss fights also end up being pretty fun (save for one), and a final boss that I could see comfortably sitting among my all time favourites.

Now all that is to say, it is by no means without flaws. My biggest gripe is the sort function missing an alphabetical sort which makes sifting through your materials often difficult if you are looking for something specific. The other main gripe I have would be that this is a late-generation Switch game so performance struggles at times. Still, despite these flaws it is absolutely a game worth experiencing, I'd dare say even worth skipping BotW for if you haven't played it.

I could probably continue to go on about how much I enjoyed Tears of the Kingdom, but I will probably leave it here. Never could I imagine I would be nearly doubling my playtime from BotW just finishing the main story and obsessively exploring the world, and I'll likely do a bit more of that before I am truly done. At the time of writing this, I am not sure if FFXVI, Trails into Reverie, or Alan Wake 2 are going to sweep GOTY 2023 away from TotK for me - but they are going to have to REALLY work for it.

Reviewed on Jun 01, 2023


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