There's some great stuff in here with the doors opened by the new powers, but it all still suffers from the same issues BOTW had.

These new Zelda games have a real problem with rewarding the player. You're given all the upgrades in the first couple of hours, which means almost every chest you open for the rest of the game is either a weapon that will be broken in 2 minutes, or often a piece of armour from the previous entry. It made me end up feeling deflated at the end of most quests.

This isn't helped by it all taking place in a world you already know with some changes. It's less "The Sequel to Breath of the Wild" as it is BOTW 1.5. I'm desperate for the next mainline entry to be a well curated semi-linear joint. Take me back.

Reviewed on Sep 12, 2023


1 Comment


7 months ago

You definitely have a valid argument here and I even agree with you on bringing the well-curated experience back in the next entry, but I'd like to note that Tears of the Kingdom does have a soft kind of item progression in the form of stuff like Zonai devices, Ultrahand, each Champion ability and technically even many weapon fusions, even if, yes, they do break eventually. There's way more distinct powers to be unlocked than in BotW, but again, I do agree that there's still an issue with item progression and would love to see them return to the previous model at least halfway