I just finished this today after about two years of abandonment. I'm not sure what compelled me to pick my switch back up a couple of days ago and finally finish this (I had taken down three out of four Divine Beasts), but I am really glad I did. even though I was slightly out of the loop from the story, I was brought back into Link and Zelda's world immediately, and became addicted just as much as I was prior. I love this game. the music was beyond phenomenal, especially during the final fight with Ganon. I could play this for hours and not complete a single quest. it was one of those open world games that was neverending. I'll probably play for a bit longer even after my main objective was completed, just for the fun of it. I hope TOTK is just as good, if not better, than this

(All shrines (114 found on my own!) and Divine Beasts, Compendium 100%, all memories, 206 Korok Seeds)

Phew… finished just in time for Tears of the Kingdom! I’ve been playing this on and off for the last three months, and I’ve just managed to complete it. There is not much I can say about this game at this point that has not already been said. I have my fair share of problems and criticisms with this game, and it didn’t move me enough to break into my top 10 probably, but it’s pretty much a masterpiece game. I did not experience the “wonder” and awe that many other people seem to have experienced, but I can see and appreciate everything that it gets right. I’ll also say that I’ve never played many of the Zelda games (only Skyward Sword many years ago, which I don’t remember at all, and Link to the Past which I played just this year), so the lack of traditional Zelda dungeons was not a downside for me. I’ll just start off with what I didn’t like first.

My biggest complaint about this game is how much time you spend in your menus. Cooking, swapping weapons/shields/bows/arrows, swapping your Sheikah power, swapping your armor, eating food, dropping campfires/flint, it’s just far too much. I know that the game has a lot of mechanics, but I feel like there is a way that all this menu crap could have been a little more streamlined. If anyone could do it, it’s Nintendo. But at the same time, it’s very on brand for them. Nintendo is very good at making incredible games with very questionable QoL omissions. Like, why can’t I cook more than one meal at a time, why does the cooking system suck so much in general, why can I only wait until three preset times of day, why is it such a pain in the ass to keep swapping armors, why do the champion abilities only recharge after you’ve used all of them, etc. I could go on for a while. It’s a lot of small grievances which add up over time, but you kind of get used to it, and it’s not bad enough to ruin the enjoyment of the game in most cases.

Another complaint I have is how empty Hyrule feels sometimes. It’s weird to say about a game with this much content, but I feel like the map is just a little bit too big. It probably could have benefited by shrinking by about 10-20%. The very obvious points of interest, like the cities and big landmarks like huge mountains or crevasses usually have stuff to do, but the areas in between aren’t too interesting. It makes for a calm experience, and it makes the moments when you do find something interesting more exciting, but still, I wish there was more worth doing. Especially when I reached the midgame and got the Master Sword, I pretty much ran out of reasons to raid enemy encampments. The rate at which I got new strong weapons just by doing shrines or finding chests outpaced the rate at which they broke, meaning I had no reason to fight enemies for their weapons anymore. This pretty much left things at Korok seeds, shrines, and the rare special moment. A special moment would be something like a random event (like finding the truffle sisters again) or curated side quests/events that have more effort put into them, like finding Naydra and doing that Shrine quest or finding Kass in the wild. Shrines are good, but even though there are 120 of them, they feel pretty sparse because of how big the world is, and how hidden many of them are.

It feels weird to say, but the Korok Seeds are kind of the glue that hold this world together. You have an incentive to collect them, and there are enough Korok challenges to keep things interesting, so those are really what you’re looking for when you’re just roaming around the place. I always laughed when I saw an obvious rock on a mountaintop, or a circle of rocks, or a very obvious metal ball chained to a well, knowing there would be a Korok waiting for me. Seeing such obvious “video game markings” is always funny to me, but Nintendo did a good job of making the player understand the language of Korok placement that sticks with you for the rest of the game. But there are so many, that everyone is going to have different knowledge of where to find them. Most people will probably know about finding them under rocks, or shooting the balloons, or putting the metal cube in the right spot, but there are plenty of other places they can be hidden. It wasn’t until near the end of the game where I found out that they can hide inside of those meltable ice spikes.Surely, there are other people who found Korok hiding places that I don’t know about, and getting familiar with these hiding spots sets you up to get plenty of inventory space by the end of the game without going overboard.

Okay, let’s talk about shrines. They’re good. I wish they were longer. I wish there were fewer of them. I wish they had more worthwhile enemies to fight inside. Many of them could have been combined with another shrine because some of them are just so damn short. There were also a ton of tests of strength, which I feel like could have been removed. Other than that though, they’re fine. Most of them are extremely obvious, but there’s a handful of them which really felt like I earned that Spirit Orb. Brute forcing a puzzle, or coming up with a solution that you know was not intended feels great also. Not much to say other than that. I would welcome them in the new game.

Divine Beasts were alright. I thought being able to interact with them through your map was an innovative feature. But it felt like there should have been something more. I dunno. The part where you work with Sidon/Teba/Yunobo/Riju to get into the Beast was usually the best or at least most exciting part. The bossfights were cool in the moment, but I can’t really remember any of them now other than the fast Lighting one. And speaking of bossfights, I think the final boss was fine. Apparently a lot of people thought it was lackluster. It was fine. I’m not expecting Slave Knight Gael or anything. The combat in this game is better than average, but not much more than that, and I think they did a good job of making an exciting boss with the tools that they had. My main complaint would be the Bow of Light section. I just think there should have been a little bit more to that second phase than just shooting some light beams.

Story was also not a major part of the story, but I think Nintendo did a good job of weaving it into the game with how open the world is. Finding specific points on the map from the pictures was pretty cool, and running into Pikango was always a welcome occurrence. I found myself caring about Zelda and her struggles and the rest of the Champions with the little screen time they had, even though they were not fleshed out much. I think the main game could have benefited from having the DLC cutscenes in it from the start, but I’m not going to complain too much about that.

I know this review sounded pretty lukewarm, even middling, and there was much more I could have talked about, but the freedom you have in this game and the personal stories you create make it hard to put the adventure into words. This really felt like my own journey, and I think that everyone who liked this game can relate to that. It’s a similar experience I had when I was playing through Elden Ring for the first time, and I hope to feel the same way when playing Tears of the Kingdom. See ya in three months.