It's always exciting when a game comes out and you can feel the confidence of the team that made it through the game itself. Tears of the Kingdom is one of the most confident games I've ever played, and despite any minor misgivings I may have with certain elements, it earns that confidence. In the 6 years since BOTW open world devs have just barely started to catch up only to be absolutely humbled yet again by a game running on 2017 mobile hardware.
They doubled down on every single aspect of BOTW, even those that got fan backlash - and in just about all cases I'd say they absolutely made the right call. When I saw that not only was aggressive weapon durability back but it was actually given a story contextualization this time I had the biggest grin on my face.
Every single new ability Link gets in this is a total gamechanger and multiplicative. Ultrahand being so incredibly freeform has really led to a whole new era in Zelda traversal and puzzle solving that feels like yet another revolution. Having mechanics like this, normally reserved for games that revolve solely around building, actually implemented into the context of a narrative action/adventure game, and the game having to be designed around all that that implies, really left me feeling so satisfied every time I was presented with an obstacle. There is friction here - it's not as simple as just finding a one size fits all solution for every problem, and sometimes creations take time to come together, but I think that's seriously the magic of it. Of course these ideas you have can all go horribly wrong too - which leads me to my next point - this is one of the funniest games ever made. Not due to charming dialogue or quirky characters (though there is plently of that in Zelda fashion), just entirely through looney tunes gags that you invent yourself and wild situations you can end up in. The fact that they clearly clued in on this and leaned into it so heavily was a great decision.
I could go on and on - The multilayered world is genius in so many ways, the story is mostly interesting with some spectacular moments but definitely is not the series best, some dungeons are just average while others are actually pretty incredible and show the potential of dungeons in this new format - the point is, this is easily one of the most impressive games ever created and it makes 90% of AAA look absolutely dated and bereft of ideas by comparison.
They doubled down on every single aspect of BOTW, even those that got fan backlash - and in just about all cases I'd say they absolutely made the right call. When I saw that not only was aggressive weapon durability back but it was actually given a story contextualization this time I had the biggest grin on my face.
Every single new ability Link gets in this is a total gamechanger and multiplicative. Ultrahand being so incredibly freeform has really led to a whole new era in Zelda traversal and puzzle solving that feels like yet another revolution. Having mechanics like this, normally reserved for games that revolve solely around building, actually implemented into the context of a narrative action/adventure game, and the game having to be designed around all that that implies, really left me feeling so satisfied every time I was presented with an obstacle. There is friction here - it's not as simple as just finding a one size fits all solution for every problem, and sometimes creations take time to come together, but I think that's seriously the magic of it. Of course these ideas you have can all go horribly wrong too - which leads me to my next point - this is one of the funniest games ever made. Not due to charming dialogue or quirky characters (though there is plently of that in Zelda fashion), just entirely through looney tunes gags that you invent yourself and wild situations you can end up in. The fact that they clearly clued in on this and leaned into it so heavily was a great decision.
I could go on and on - The multilayered world is genius in so many ways, the story is mostly interesting with some spectacular moments but definitely is not the series best, some dungeons are just average while others are actually pretty incredible and show the potential of dungeons in this new format - the point is, this is easily one of the most impressive games ever created and it makes 90% of AAA look absolutely dated and bereft of ideas by comparison.