The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the long awaited follow up to the much beloved The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nintendo’s development team took what was good about Breath of the Wild and made it better. They also took what wasn’t great about Breath of the Wild, and made it…better too? They retained the spirit of Breath of the Wild and expanded upon it. While the development team maintained the flow and experience that Breath of the Wild offers, they did exceptionally well at expanding upon it to give us a fresh new experience set in the same world that we’ve gotten to know.

The story in Tears of the Kingdom is much more present than before. The game starts out with Link and Zelda exploring the catacombs beneath Hyrule Castle. Down there we see murals that depict a prophecy that foretold the events of Breath of the Wild. We also see murals obscured by debris that would have shown us events yet to come. Diving deeper into the depths and we find the remains of who we will later find out to be the Demon King Ganondorf. The cave starts collapsing around you and Zelda falls. Link dives after her but she disappears and a mysterious arm catches you. This thrusts you into the tutorial area and starts you upon your mission to find Zelda (sound familiar?). As you once again embark on a journey across Hyrule you find yourself encountering old friends and making new friends. Each of the land’s races have been plagued by a new disaster as they try to move on from the damage wrought by the Calamity. The developers do a great job making these issues unique to the region. Rito is stuck in a never-ending blizzard, Goron City has these weird rocks that are brainwashing the locals, Zora’s Domain is suffering from pollution, and the Gerudos are being attacked by the horrifying Gibdos. After helping each race the companion that accompanies you awakens as a sage. You’re given the former sage’s perspective on the Imprisoning War and then you’re given a shadow form of the companion to run around with you and help you fight. It’s a bit formulaic and I wish the game did better to acknowledge your progression into the story. Each location you go to operates on the assumption that you are visiting there before anywhere else. This results in the repetition of information. By the time you’ve helped the four sages you’ve been told the same story four times. You’ve also likely discovered the geoglyphs that have been scattered across the land. These geoglyphs are the game’s way of showing you the events of the past where you learn that Zelda disappeared at the beginning of the game and traveled through time to the past. She meets Hyrule’s first king and queen who are named Rauru and Sonia. You learn that Rauru confronted Ganondorf with the help of each of the race’s sages along with Zelda and one of his own people. They weren’t able to beat him so Rauru seals him away and trusts that Link will be able to defeat him in his time. While the game does a good job conveying the main story beats that happen in the past, I don’t believe the game gives you enough context on the events that lead to Ganondorf’s imprisonment. There are large gaps of time where you have no idea what has been happening. Although I wish the game filled in those gaps a little bit better, I do believe that the geoglyphs are a better way of facilitating story than the obscure landmarks that you have to search for in Breath of the Wild.

The tutorial area of this game makes sense thematically but ultimately falls short of what a good tutorial should be. A good tutorial generally speaking should be concise. The idea is to teach players the parameters that they must operate within in order to play the game. Tears of the Kingdom puts more focus on playing with your new abilities than it does with learning the core mechanics and pushing you into the rest of the game. The cluster of islands are disjointed and oftentimes it’s more challenging to navigate the islands than it is to do the shrines that introduce you to your new abilities. This idea would have worked better as a game demo rather than a tutorial section. It’s easy to spend hours in this playground of a section, just trying to find the shrines to move forward. In contrast to Breath of the Wild, this tutorial is too much. Frustrations are amplified by the lack of a glider (which you can get shortly after leaving) and the fact that the game sends you back to where you started to search for the tutorial shrines, only to send you to the other side of the islands, and then bring you back to the beginning again. From a gameplay perspective, it’s nice to have a safe environment where you can practice your new abilities that you are going to be using for the duration of the game. It’s just a bit too large in scope when you consider the big picture.

As before, once you leave the tutorial area, the world is wide open for you to explore. The main quest is there to guide you, should you not know where to start, but it is entirely up to you whether you follow it or not. One thing to note here is that despite having your core abilities, there is still one ability that you have not gotten yet. It’s arguably unnecessary but it feels a bit odd to receive it later. The land of Hyrule is the same land that was in Breath of the Wild but with a huge facelift due to the events that transpired in the catacombs. What has been dubbed “The Upheaval” has sent several land masses up into the sky and dramatically altered the landscape. While you will see many familiar places, many of them are completely different. One thing to note is that there are no guardians to be found anywhere. They have all been replaced with ancient “Zonai” technology.

The overworld of Tears of the Kingdom is great. It captures the vastness of Hyrule profoundly while also giving you a much larger sense of unification since the events of Breath of the Wild. While Breath of the Wild felt empty and hopeless, truly driving in the sense of devastation and destruction brought by the Calamity, Tears of the Kingdom shows the people of Hyrule working together to rebuild. You’re given a sense of the world evolving and moving forward. I appreciate the evolution of the skyview towers. They went from simple towers standing tall to launch pads that send you high into the sky. Some of them are straightforward and you can just use them. Others were made to require you to do quests in order to access them or find an alternative way to access them.The functionality of using the towers to skydive towards other parts of the map felt amazing and worked incredibly well when trying to cross large amounts of the map.

The overworld also offers a copious amount of side quests. All with varying levels of urgency. Some of these are contained and give you small rewards while others span multiple quests and the rewards are greater. The great fairies have relocated and in order to unlock them you have to help a traveling troupe of performers. Each character has a unique quest along with having to help the troupe reach the fairy. I find the side quests to feel about the same as in Breath of the Wild. I like the concept of helping out the people in the world and being rewarded with items that help you on your adventure. It’s not a new concept but I feel like it’s well done and worth noting.

While we’re on the overworld, let’s talk about the underworld. The chasm depths in this game was a huge surprise for fans everywhere. It was the one aspect of the game that Nintendo kept very secret. The delight of discovering an entire new level to explore was great. This area is an effective mirror to the overworld. The land above directly corresponds to the land below. You encounter a lot of the same enemies but they’re covered in gloom. It’s also pitch black and comes across as intimidating upon your first arrival. The blasts of the horn instruments does a great job capturing the feeling you experience the first time you discover one of these chasm entries and jump down. Once you get going and you start to explore, it becomes incredibly manageable. In some ways it’s easier to explore the depths than the overworld. Enemies don’t do nearly as much damage in the depths but instead they seal away your hearts. You can restore them by finding light roots or returning to the surface. It works as a great way to balance exploration on both levels. There are several access points to the chasm and there is an entire plot line that addresses the Yiga clan. Later in the game you can find several rematches with dungeon bosses which makes for a fun experience as it’ll allow you to relive those fights without having to start a new game. There are other unique challenges that take place in the depths as well. The depths have ultimately been a positive experience and a massive addition to the already large expanse that is Hyrule.

In contrast to the chasm depth, we have another map layer that depicts the land masses in the sky. While not nearly as expansive as the depths or the overworld, the sky islands offer unique challenges that involve traversing multiple islands in a chain and trying not to fall back to the surface. The main story takes you to a few of these chains. I do feel that we do not have quite enough content in the sky. Especially with how much Nintendo commercialized it. That being said, I do believe that what sky content we do get is fun and engaging.

Much like in Breath of the Wild we have a plethora of shrines to explore. More in this one than before actually. This time we can actually completely fill the health and the stamina meters. I still don’t understand why the developers didn’t allow for that in Breath of the Wild. This time around you can get heart containers and stamina upgrades from certain quests too. I find the shrines to be about as engaging as they were in Breath of the Wild. They’re concise challenges that test your skills with Link’s abilities. The shrines do feel a bit less important though. Since Link’s abilities have been reconfigured and a bit more restrictive, you end up getting a lot of challenges that feel similar. Along with new shrines we also get new dungeons of course. I found these dungeons to be okay. I often felt that getting to the dungeons was more interesting than doing the dungeons themselves. The dungeons are less involved this time around and come off as tutorials to demonstrate the abilities of your companions that accompany you to the dungeons. I would have liked to see more involvement in the dungeons. Similar to what we saw in Breath of the Wild where you could interact with the dungeon to change conditions. Out of the five dungeons we visited, I found the Lightning Temple to be the most engaging. It felt more like a classic dungeon and I felt the most engaged while exploring its passages. In contrast the Wind Temple was probably the least interesting. It felt more like a glider exploration dungeon. I spent more time trying to figure out where puzzles were than I spent solving them. The Water Temple was slightly better but it was largely uninteresting too. The Fire Temple feels a bit too reliant on the minecarts to get around. I’m willing to forgive this because it fits the thematic elements that are present in Death Mountain and Goron City. Having each of the regular dungeons employing the same method of finding 4-5 objective points doesn’t help with the mundanity either. Shout out to the Spirit Temple for giving you an amazing boss battle despite not having a proper dungeon. Although one could argue that the journey to the dungeon feels like a dungeon itself.

Link’s toolkit in this game is tailored to interacting with the world in a more objective manner. I could easily tell that the game was designed with the expectation that you’ll be using Ultrahand a lot. Due to the nature of ultrahand it allows you to come up with solutions on your own. Rather than using abilities that relate to the environment, you’re meant to manipulate the environment to suit your needs. The game has several stations set up with materials so that you can let your inner engineer get to work. I’m not very creative so my creations were either overkill or incredibly rudimentary and far from practical. But that’s okay because the game allows for you to approach it regardless of how creative you are. The game is more building oriented this way. The limitations imposed by changing Link’s toolkit makes navigating this world a unique challenge that you don’t experience in Breath of the Wild. Most vertical problems in Breath of the Wild can be addressed with Revali’s Gale. The lack of that ability makes the player have to consider their options. This can result in taking a more straightforward approach. Sometimes the solution is as simple as ‘get under it and use Ascend’ when trying to figure out the way forward. Sometimes it’s a control stick with a fan attached. Other times it’s a platform with fans, wheels, and rockets. The options feel endless and it goes a long way for the longevity of the game. The sage abilities you earn in these games are interesting. I believe they are less useful than the champion abilities in Breath of the Wild but they are also indicative of the themes in the game. The champion abilities are more conducive towards survival and exploration while the sage abilities are more useful for combat scenarios. Tulin’s wind ability is unique but Revali’s Gale is arguably better. Yunobo’s boulder bomb has more utility than the shield ability. Sidon’s water strike was the most fun to use in the Water Temple dungeon but becomes virtually useless once you leave the area. Riju’s lightning is an interesting upgrade to Urbosa’s lightning and the most practical. The fifth sage’s ability being the construct is the most fun in my opinion. Mech battle bosses and being able to fuse zonai devices to the construct adds the flavor needed to make the construct more useful and fun to use. I do, however, wish the sage abilities were easier to access. The sages have an uncanny tendency to run away from you which makes it challenging when you need to use their abilities. You’re supposed to be able to whistle to get them to come near you but more often than not they don’t react to your whistling at all. Having the abilities on the d-pad would make them a lot more accessible.

The boss battles in this game are more varied and interesting than in Breath of the Wild. The phantoms in Breath of the Wild had interesting battle mechanics but felt procedurally designed. In Tears of the Kingdom, each boss is unique and fitting for the dungeon. My favorite boss battle hands down are the mech battles. Both the Kohga mech battle and the Spirit Temple mech battle since they are basically the same battle. Piloting the construct just feels good and having battles that play into it just works. Each boss poses challenges that work thematically. Mucktorok spills sludge all over the place and Sidon’s ability cleans it out. The development team did a great job integrating the sage abilities into the boss battles. Whether the ability is needed to inflict damage or to expose the boss’s weakness. The exception being Tulin’s ability but even then, the ability is helpful in maneuvering so that you can inflict damage on the boss.

The way the game uses sound and music lends itself to exploration and discovery, but I can’t help but miss the sweeping scores that you used to be greeted with when playing older titles like Ocarina of Time, or Wind Waker. I held the same sentiment with Breath of the Wild. I’m left wanting more. I do believe the soundtrack is more present this time around and the soundtrack does incredibly well during other aspects of the game. The boss themes are great and the music that plays during your cutscenes do well to suit the mood.

Tears of the Kingdom has given me a much greater impression than Breath of the Wild has. When I first played Breath of the Wild I thought that it was a good game but I didn’t really care for it as a Legend of Zelda title. It was missing too many things that I felt were integral to the Legend of Zelda experience. Over time my opinion of the game has warmed up and I have come to appreciate aspects of the game that I didn’t before. I still don’t quite understand the level of love and appreciation that the game has garnered from the fanbase but I’m less bothered by it. With Tears of the Kingdom I feel like I am able to connect with that sentiment that the fanbase holds for Breath of the Wild. Everything that this game does just works and works well. While I still have my favorites that are neither Breath of the Wild nor Tears of the Kingdom, I do believe that Tears of the Kingdom is objectively the best Legend of Zelda game to be released to date.