The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Review

I went into this game completely blind, ’cause I’m a Zelda fanboy and knew I’d buy it regardless. So the first few hours really caught me off guard with just how disappointing they were. Then at some point, everything finally clicked, and I got totally sucked in. I’ve now spent over 50 hours with the game and will put in at least another 20 before calling it quits. So, yes, ultimately, Tears of the Kingdom is a great game, and a better game than Breath of the Wild, but the reasons are not so obvious. First, the tutorial area in Tears is a downright slog compared to BotW. It really sets the wrong tone and presents too linear of a structure for a game that likes to tease “freedom.” Even after you touch down on the main world, you still have to follow the story quests for a fair bit to unlock key gameplay elements. I would never want to restart this game from scratch because of it.

The other off-putting thing about Tears was the new Ultrahand ability that lets you build contraptions by gluing objects together. Frankly, Ultrahand is a clunky pain in the butt. I appreciate that many of the shrines are designed to teach you all of the creative ways Ultrahand can be used, but I more often than not just cheesed my way through their intended solutions. If you remove Ultrahand, though, it kinda feels like Tears doesn’t have much more to offer over BotW. They both use the exact same overworld and four-temple narrative, with Tears adding a paltry number of floating islands in the sky. Big whoop. Tears also introduces an underworld, though, that feels both empty and pointless, yet mysterious and full of secrets. It’s hard to explain, but I loved and hated exploring this underworld. It is anxiety-inducing, for sure, but I would purposefully get lost down there for hours just to see what else it might be hiding from me.

The overworld itself adds extra touches in the form of explorable caves and wells, with these often leading to special collectibles that certain characters will trade you for. It’s a better reward system than finding yet another weapon that you either don’t have the inventory space for… or you do, but what’s the point, it’s just gonna break in the next fight, anyway. Unfortunately, Nintendo did little to improve the combat in this game, and I still found it easier to avoid confrontations as much as possible. But there are many other improvements that go a long way to making this a better sequel. There’s a huge amount of actual side quests, a camera that’s used in more interesting ways than just “fill album,” this random dork brain who consistently needs help with basic physics, etc. The amount of content is reminiscent to Fenyx Rising, where there was something to do around every corner. It’s been hell for my short attention span, but in 50+ hours, I haven’t once been bored.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.