After finally completing the game a couple of months ago, I can - with every bit of confidence in me - say that it is GOTY of 2023 for me.
It's a game that as its release drew closer, I grew more and more excited. This review is from a guy who didn't leave his room for three days because he was playing the ever-living crap out of Zelda. TotK brought the no-lifer out of me!
The story (both the narrative and gameplay storyteling) is majestic, the mechanics more fleshed out than ever and the dungeons... OH THE DUNGEONS! it's a game that should be studied when designing an open-world RPG. There were so many times when I booted the game to check something out and got distracted by a side-quest, which led to another side-quest. And then another. And another. And another... and then I ended up putting 10 hours in the game every day for a week!
I don't want to tire you with extra bullshit from my time with TotK. Just play the game and don't get any spoilers. It's a truly beautiful game, with amazing gameplay and a fantastic story that will instantly suck you in and just when you feel that you're getting tired of it... BOOM YOU'RE SUCKED IN AGAIN!!!

It's a SPICY take, I know, but this is pretty good, isn't it? It says everything that I'm a little more pessimistic on it than most and I'd still call it a straight-up masterpiece. When they aren't forcing poor Mario to adopt a marketable new hobby every summer, modern Nintendo operates purely on sicko mode, and Tears of the Kingdom is a shining example of that consistency. Do I think this is maybe a little TOO much like Breath of the Wild stylistically and tonally? Yes. Is it tedious playing an 100-hour RPG with a combat system that was already outdated when BOTW came out in 2017? For sure. Is it annoying when every cutscene reminds you of the same three plot points you learnt 70 hours ago? Unbelievably so. But do any of these detract from the game as a whole? Not at all.

Tears of the Kingdom is just a game design masterclass. It gives you a fresh trim, drops you into Breath of the Wild's map and sets you up with a suite of new tools, then proceeds to show you how that fresh ability set transforms how you look at every single one of BOTW's mechanics. While most of the original game's powers became largely redundant halfway through the adventure, Tears of the Kingdom's tools change every single thing about the game and how you interact with it. There could be full games based around just one of these mechanics, and Tears of the Kingdom has fucking four of them. Ultrahand and the building feature alone is genuinely one of the most impressive video game accomplishments I've ever seen; Nintendo literally built one of the best physics-based puzzle systems of all time and then just dropped it into an already sprawling fantasy RPG sandbox. It's such an ambitious, baller-ass move for a franchise that could quite easily coast off more of the same.

But while you can spend days learning and exploring the building system, its biggest achievement is that it doesn't eclipse what an excellent adventure this is. Breath of the Wild inspired an entire generation of video games by letting go of your hand and putting the unknown back into exploring an open world. No map full of waypoints and zero "clear seventy-five enemy bases to get a new sword decal" type missions. Just the thrill of journeying to an undiscovered point on the map and seeing what new story or intricate cave system you'll discover. And Tears of the Kingdom somehow effortlessly does that again. I'd of loved for them to lean a little more into the creepiness of the awesome prologue and maybe channel Majora Mask's tone, but enough has changed since you last explored Hyrule to retain that sense of mystery and wonder.

Barring Elden Ring, It's easily the best open world I've explored since the original Breath of the Wild, and you can tell that by just how much off-the-beaten-path side content I've marked off the log. I knew this game had its hooks in when I walked into this random woman's house and she was like, shit, my nan's dying and I need to make her some magical porridge. And me, with my ADHD-ass brain that just wants big fights and to do a backflip off my horse, is still for some reason like, I got you random lazy lady. I'll meticulously search the fields for dandelions and butter to cure your poorly nan, purely because I just want to see what on earth is on that hill that kind of looks like a gremlin's head and you're crappy side mission will force me to go there.

I appreciate the stronger story too. For one, they made the evil garden gnome man actually scary. When did Ganondorf get so yolked, bro? My guy spent half the game reenacting that one scene in The Last Jedi where Kylo Ren Zoom calls Daisy Ridley while he's topless. He's a bit underutilized, but this has to be up there with Twilight Princess' interpretation of the big Dorf dude. Just beefed up, perfectly cast and, by the end of the game, happily unleashing his inner Elden Ring boss. His return and the amazing Zelda-focused segments of the plotline easily outdo the BOTW Calamity Ganon story, which makes the game's sheer terror that you have either forgotten or weren't paying attention to the cutscenes all the more annoying. I swear, I have nightmares about sparking out another boss just for one of those spirit dudes to rock up and be like "HELLO LINK. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT AN EVENT KNOWN AS THE IMPRISONING WAR". Bro... I KNOW! I'VE SEEN THIS EVENT FOUR TIMES.

Imprisoning wars aside, against all the odds, Nintendo somehow equalled what many would argue was the best game of the last generation. This is easily a top-tier Zelda entry with some of the best ideas and moments in the series. It was worth the wait, for sure, if only to see the shocking amount of ways people can bully Koroks. You gotta imagine absolutely no one at Nintendo was building the Ultrahand system and thought, "Ah, you know what I reckon they'll do with all this? Create complex, masterfully engineered torture devices to horrifically murder the legion of small, adorable, maraca-wielding little leaf men we've dotted throughout our open world." You're all animals, I swear to god.

100% shrines, lightroots and caves
Amazing game, okay sequel, they added new things but at the same time didn't. Anything related to the main story quests was peak zelda, the music and cutscene direction is beautiful. Since I already played breath of the wild the magic of exploring the map just wasn't there which is what I really enjoyed about the first game. So many of the rewards are bad or sometimes you get a reward past the time you would use it. Upgrading armors involves playing the game in a way I don't think is even intended for an exploration/adventure game (running around farming maps). Anyway I hope they don't ever reuse a map again, the underground was extremely disappointing there's pretty much no reason to be down there.