Tears of the Kingdom is such a difficult game for me to review and rate. My time with this game was amazing. I got about 140 hours out of one playthrough, of which the first 80 hours or so were filled with excitement. That, in and of itself, is very valuable to me. But, the longer I played, the more my opinion shifted towards my opinion on Elden Ring.

Open world games have become very popular over the last few years, and I completely understand why. Players feel like these massive worlds have so much to offer, which makes their investment of 60 to 80 dollars more valuable. Not only that, you have the freedom to do whatever you want and however you want it. To me, that's the absolute best aspect of open worlds; I get to go "WOW what is this!" around every corner.

Afterwards, though, it loses its magic very quickly. Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Skyrim, and so on and so on, all face the same problem: their massiveness and ambition need to be filled up somehow, but the developers do not have enough time to actually do this uniquely for every aspect of the game. Assets get re-used over and over and over again, to the point you actually get sick of seeing them (namely the 1000 new Koroks I could not give a fuck about, as well as the last 80 Bubbul gems without reward). Bosses, main storyline bosses and enemies are copy-pasted in the most random spots, just to fill up the void. NPC's behave very similarly and offer the same type of sidequest for little to no reward, and often these games are poorly optimised as well (TotK suffers from this immensely, more so than needed in my opinion)...All of these reasons make it less likely for me to enjoy playing the game after completing them. The sky islands and the depths in TotK are literally nothing but the same thing stretched out for miles, occasionally rewarding you for exploring them with a cool nostalgic outfit. Major story bosses from all 5 temples are just randomly copied into the depths, which completely remove their magic. 50% of the quests are fetchquests that require you to have 10 of a specific item, which I often already had. About 20% of all 152 shrines are Rauru's blessings. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Now don't get me wrong, open world games always have something great to offer (which is why I rate them highly still). Tears of the Kingdom allows for complete creative freedom with the ability to build vehicles and other contraptions, and lets you play around with a completely new physics engine for which the limit is literally only your imagination and a build limit of about 20 pieces. It is the highlight of TotK by a mile, even overshadowing the other new fun powers the game has to offer. Comparing them to the powers in Breath of the Wild makes BotW look like an early prototype, to be honest, which is now completely killed by its sequel.

TotK improves on many other aspects of BotW as well. The dungeons are far more interesting and unique, both in how they look and play. I'm very glad they brought more traditional temples back from the dead, but with the puzzle elements that BotW used. It feels like a very fair compromise, in my opinion. They also, thankfully, feature bosses that are a lot more interesting. Too bad they get copy-pasted into the depths though. Lastly, the shrine puzzles were so much more creative and fun to solve, mostly due to the vast improvement on the powers you get to play around with. They also removed the combat shrines, which was very welcome.

More importantly, the main quest of TotK is 100x more interesting than the story in BotW. Bringing some of the elements of old Zelda games back was a phenominal move on Nintendo's part, and the story still felt unique to its predecessors despite this. I must say, however, that the voice acting in this game is still god-awful, and at times it made me want to destroy my own eardrums to protect myself from the cringe that is English anime dub. If I wasn't a fan of the Zelda series as a whole, I would have probably hated BotW and TotK for this very reason, just like I dislike most J-RPG's out there. Thankfully, Matt Mercer and the voice actors of Sonia and Riju saved the day a little bit.

The main storyline is again dispersed throughout the entire kingdom, but a little more easily found this time. The memories of Zelda that you encounter all have great significance and are a joy to watch. They made me most excited to keep playing, as well as the anticipation of the finale. And MAN, did they nail the finale in this one. The final fight was incredible and built up excitement in me that I had not felt in a long while.

However, another point I feel needs adressing is the bleak character that is Link, both in BotW and TotK. Link, my guy, you get more excited cooking something new than you do seeing your beloved Zelda again, what is that about? He literally has close to zero emotions in these games. It feels awful, because Link HAS HAD more expressive emotions in past games like Skyward Sword, where he actually cares for Zelda and wants to fight for her resurrection. In TotK, Link doesn't even blink an eye when he finds out Zelda sacrificed her life to become a dragon...Wtf is that? Yes he has always been designed to be stoic and infinitely courageous in the face of danger, but he sadly becomes a dry piece of white bread this way.

Now to the strongest point of all: the OST. Holy shit is the OST absolutely stunning in TotK. Everything fits, from bosses to dungeons to diving from the sky. In addition, the music develops and unvelopes as you progress through dungeons, fights and actions so seemlessly that you are completely taken in by what's happening in the game. A great example of this is the Gleeok fight, a very dangerous fight compared to some of the other mini-bosses found in the world. It starts off frantic and exciting, but completely changes in tone when you get the Gleeok down on the ground. It starts to feel triumphant and heroic, encouraging you to go in and hit heavy. There are also many hints to previous Zelda games in the OST, which I appreciate greatly. It's truly wonderful, and I will listen to it for years to come.

Despite the fact that I have been quite negative throughout this review, I think TotK is an amazing game, for sure. I am glad I got to experience the whole of it blindly and I will remember it fondly. But I cannot give it a perfect score. Sadly, too many small things chipped away at the joy and fun I felt for this game. Maybe open world games are less cut out for me than more flushed out, short game experiences out there.