Heaven and Hell, time heals all wounds
It's hard to deny the trepidation initially surrounding Tears of the Kingdom's media cycle, not much was known and not much was given until the launch was right around the corner. We knew it would be riding of the idea that was initially being a DLC and even setting the COVID delays aside, the game has taken around 5-6 years to create. Breath of the Wild despite being lauded as a refreshing change to the formula and won critical and financial praise in the eyes of the general consensus, some longtime fans feel saddened by the change in formula. I've been in the same position myself before with being a traditional final fantasy fan seeing the titles go action based and seen it when Like a Dragon fans be angry when the mainline series goes turn based. I still wish for some of these series to continue in the original formula but it can also attribute to developer fatigue and what the higher ups want. Not to mention ever since the formula change, major zelda game releases are considered cultural events in the social zeitgeist now and are now some of the highly praised and financially successful games in recent time (not to say Zelda has not received critical acclaim before). With that said though, I feel like people need to relax with the flinging when someone doesn't like a critically acclaimed title and respect other people's opinions. In the end of the day, only your own opinion should matter. I personally enjoyed Breath of the Wild a lot, like many others it was my first switch game and I've put two hundred hours in the title which is a rarity these days with the constant flux of video games coming out that particularly interest me but a part of me does wonder if the magic can be recreated once again with Tears of the Kingdom, I admit a part of the magic was playing this back in 2017 and wondering how this world was even being rendered on a portable console of all things. It was unheard of at the time coming from the 3DS/Vita portable generation but here we are now with the Switch showing its age. To my own surprise, Tears of the Kingdom manages to bring back that magic and doubles down on the sandbox open world approach into a realm not many people see in titles like these. I apologize for the intro delving into the state of discussion about this title but these reviews are for me in the end of the day, thank you if you enjoy my reading and if you disagree with my opinions, that's alright too but please remember we're all human.
Tears of the Kingdoms provide the same story structure like Breath of the Wild but manages to keep it surprisingly focused despite its haphazard approach with cutscenes being locked into open world landmarks in a sense. You do have a main quest to progress but to gain insight on the story, you need to find these landmarks and view the cutscenes and likely they'll be out of order too. I was able to piece these together pretty much but I can understand if this approach is frustrating or confusing for some people. I really think the high points of the story are amazing though and actually had my jaw on the floor especially in the end and I'm not even that much of a fan of the series myself that much. It's definitely longer too but I feel like the ending nails the game on such a high note that it might be one of my favorite endings in a Nintendo first party series that isn't Xenoblade.
I and many others could write a book on the game design of Tears of the Kingdom and it feels like it would never be enough. This is why those sixty hours and two weeks flew on by for me. The tools given to you completely re-conceptualizes the world of the original Breath of the Wild while adding layers to the exploration with two new areas. The tools given to you can alter the world itself, alter the weapons you use, let you reach places otherwise unimaginable that feels like a developer tool and let you turn back time on objects. You've probably seen a bunch of specific creations on social media and wherever you go already on what people have built and it's hard to imagine what else you can do. This is one of the main strengths of Tears of the Kingdom: finding your own solutions to problems. I've essentially used ascend and recall cheese to complete 70% of the shrines and despite this sounding tedious, I had fun with this because this was the way I wanted to solve the problem instead of what the developer intended. My only complaint in the beginning was not getting enough Zonai devices early on and having to build every thing myself but I will assure you that there is an ability that alleviates this for the most part and if you want to grab this ability for yourself, look further in the depths. Combat has remained largely unchanged in the actual performance of fighting other than Fuse. In the relevance of the story, regular weapons don't remotely cut it anymore for damage so you're required to fuse to be able to properly output for damage and the game makes this apparent especially with some horns of enemies looking like actual axe heads. I think it's a pretty fun novelty to make your own weapons and experiment especially with the way some bases modify how the weapons act making some more risk and reward and so forth. The usual sequel fare is here with more quests, more enemies, just more things in general that refreshes this new foray into Hyrule once more. One strong complaint I have is the general performance of this title and how much frame drops are extremely apparent here. Now I'm forever impressed that Nintendo has managed to work such a huge world for the most part into almost ten year tech at this point (Tegra was 2015) and I'm usually willing to excuse performance dips if it's not common but it's taken up at least twenty to twenty five percent of my playtime that it's been hard to ignore. Using Ultrahand 50% of the time tanks it to 20 frames a second, specific places on the map just tanks it hard as well along with combat encounters too which hampers my enjoyment the most. Now I'm usually not a stickler for stuff like this usually but I feel like when it consistently hits that point, despite the actual quality of the game that it needs to be better in this department.
Something I want to talk about is the music in this game because I feel like they ramped up the epic pieces hardcore in this game. I can't say I'm a huge fan of Zelda's music in general other than the great fairy theme for how calming it can listen to in general but I feel like the epic pieces in this soundtrack mixed in with the distorted and eerie vocals really elevated the high moments of the story and made me feel like this cool hero which is the entire point. The fact that the eerie distorted vocals feels like a motif in a sense just filled me with this dread during specific moments and it almost felt surprising that Nintendo went for something like this. One of my favorite pieces that shows this off perfectly is this track that plays near the end (don't click if you don't want to get spoiled).
I really do think Tears of the Kingdom is the best sequel they could do with retaining most of the assets and ideas from the former title. The tools given to you essentially feel like debug tools, the story keeps the same format but has better beats, the music is better, there's more to do in general. If you weren't fond of Breath of the Wild in the first place then it might be hard to convince you that you would enjoy this game other than knowing that this game is a slow burn at the start, if you enjoyed Breath of the Wild then you're already playing the game as we speak. I hope they use a new map and premise for the next one, maybe create a more livelier version instead of the post apocalyptic feel of BOTW and TOTK.
Don't think it matters but this will be my last review for a while, don't mean to get personal blog post on a gaming log site but I will end my streak of reviewing every game I play here due to lack of time and not as much enjoyment in general doing so at the moment. I will still be using the site for its logging and tracking purpose but I'll probably refrain from posting comments or writing thoughts in general. Thank you for reading.
It's hard to deny the trepidation initially surrounding Tears of the Kingdom's media cycle, not much was known and not much was given until the launch was right around the corner. We knew it would be riding of the idea that was initially being a DLC and even setting the COVID delays aside, the game has taken around 5-6 years to create. Breath of the Wild despite being lauded as a refreshing change to the formula and won critical and financial praise in the eyes of the general consensus, some longtime fans feel saddened by the change in formula. I've been in the same position myself before with being a traditional final fantasy fan seeing the titles go action based and seen it when Like a Dragon fans be angry when the mainline series goes turn based. I still wish for some of these series to continue in the original formula but it can also attribute to developer fatigue and what the higher ups want. Not to mention ever since the formula change, major zelda game releases are considered cultural events in the social zeitgeist now and are now some of the highly praised and financially successful games in recent time (not to say Zelda has not received critical acclaim before). With that said though, I feel like people need to relax with the flinging when someone doesn't like a critically acclaimed title and respect other people's opinions. In the end of the day, only your own opinion should matter. I personally enjoyed Breath of the Wild a lot, like many others it was my first switch game and I've put two hundred hours in the title which is a rarity these days with the constant flux of video games coming out that particularly interest me but a part of me does wonder if the magic can be recreated once again with Tears of the Kingdom, I admit a part of the magic was playing this back in 2017 and wondering how this world was even being rendered on a portable console of all things. It was unheard of at the time coming from the 3DS/Vita portable generation but here we are now with the Switch showing its age. To my own surprise, Tears of the Kingdom manages to bring back that magic and doubles down on the sandbox open world approach into a realm not many people see in titles like these. I apologize for the intro delving into the state of discussion about this title but these reviews are for me in the end of the day, thank you if you enjoy my reading and if you disagree with my opinions, that's alright too but please remember we're all human.
Tears of the Kingdoms provide the same story structure like Breath of the Wild but manages to keep it surprisingly focused despite its haphazard approach with cutscenes being locked into open world landmarks in a sense. You do have a main quest to progress but to gain insight on the story, you need to find these landmarks and view the cutscenes and likely they'll be out of order too. I was able to piece these together pretty much but I can understand if this approach is frustrating or confusing for some people. I really think the high points of the story are amazing though and actually had my jaw on the floor especially in the end and I'm not even that much of a fan of the series myself that much. It's definitely longer too but I feel like the ending nails the game on such a high note that it might be one of my favorite endings in a Nintendo first party series that isn't Xenoblade.
I and many others could write a book on the game design of Tears of the Kingdom and it feels like it would never be enough. This is why those sixty hours and two weeks flew on by for me. The tools given to you completely re-conceptualizes the world of the original Breath of the Wild while adding layers to the exploration with two new areas. The tools given to you can alter the world itself, alter the weapons you use, let you reach places otherwise unimaginable that feels like a developer tool and let you turn back time on objects. You've probably seen a bunch of specific creations on social media and wherever you go already on what people have built and it's hard to imagine what else you can do. This is one of the main strengths of Tears of the Kingdom: finding your own solutions to problems. I've essentially used ascend and recall cheese to complete 70% of the shrines and despite this sounding tedious, I had fun with this because this was the way I wanted to solve the problem instead of what the developer intended. My only complaint in the beginning was not getting enough Zonai devices early on and having to build every thing myself but I will assure you that there is an ability that alleviates this for the most part and if you want to grab this ability for yourself, look further in the depths. Combat has remained largely unchanged in the actual performance of fighting other than Fuse. In the relevance of the story, regular weapons don't remotely cut it anymore for damage so you're required to fuse to be able to properly output for damage and the game makes this apparent especially with some horns of enemies looking like actual axe heads. I think it's a pretty fun novelty to make your own weapons and experiment especially with the way some bases modify how the weapons act making some more risk and reward and so forth. The usual sequel fare is here with more quests, more enemies, just more things in general that refreshes this new foray into Hyrule once more. One strong complaint I have is the general performance of this title and how much frame drops are extremely apparent here. Now I'm forever impressed that Nintendo has managed to work such a huge world for the most part into almost ten year tech at this point (Tegra was 2015) and I'm usually willing to excuse performance dips if it's not common but it's taken up at least twenty to twenty five percent of my playtime that it's been hard to ignore. Using Ultrahand 50% of the time tanks it to 20 frames a second, specific places on the map just tanks it hard as well along with combat encounters too which hampers my enjoyment the most. Now I'm usually not a stickler for stuff like this usually but I feel like when it consistently hits that point, despite the actual quality of the game that it needs to be better in this department.
Something I want to talk about is the music in this game because I feel like they ramped up the epic pieces hardcore in this game. I can't say I'm a huge fan of Zelda's music in general other than the great fairy theme for how calming it can listen to in general but I feel like the epic pieces in this soundtrack mixed in with the distorted and eerie vocals really elevated the high moments of the story and made me feel like this cool hero which is the entire point. The fact that the eerie distorted vocals feels like a motif in a sense just filled me with this dread during specific moments and it almost felt surprising that Nintendo went for something like this. One of my favorite pieces that shows this off perfectly is this track that plays near the end (don't click if you don't want to get spoiled).
I really do think Tears of the Kingdom is the best sequel they could do with retaining most of the assets and ideas from the former title. The tools given to you essentially feel like debug tools, the story keeps the same format but has better beats, the music is better, there's more to do in general. If you weren't fond of Breath of the Wild in the first place then it might be hard to convince you that you would enjoy this game other than knowing that this game is a slow burn at the start, if you enjoyed Breath of the Wild then you're already playing the game as we speak. I hope they use a new map and premise for the next one, maybe create a more livelier version instead of the post apocalyptic feel of BOTW and TOTK.
Don't think it matters but this will be my last review for a while, don't mean to get personal blog post on a gaming log site but I will end my streak of reviewing every game I play here due to lack of time and not as much enjoyment in general doing so at the moment. I will still be using the site for its logging and tracking purpose but I'll probably refrain from posting comments or writing thoughts in general. Thank you for reading.