They actually did it.
I am certain that I wasn’t alone in the build up to Tears of the Kingdom’s release in feeling hesitant, concerned, possibly even scared that Nintendo would trip over this hurdle, that making a sequel to what many people consider the greatest game of all time and even the people who (for some reason) felt Breath of the Wild was overrated couldn’t deny had a huge impact on games and how we see them, both from the perspective of players and developers.
Could Nintendo catch lightning in a bottle twice? Would revisiting an existing Hyrule simply feel like a retread or just some big DLC?
How would they, how could they possibly improve on the exploration, the mechanics, the magic that the Switch game which sold more copies than machines had done?
Capturing the magic is a term that I have seen floating around before and since TOTK’s release, like so much about this game and games in general that “magic” is subjective.
To me it was an impossibility to capture the same magic BOTW did simply because so much of that magic was tied into the launch of the Nintendo Switch for many of it’s early adopters, myself included.
My stand on magic being captured is Nintendo succeeded, it is not “that” magic but a new variation on it - the romantic in me wants to describe it like falling in love again, the depressed anxious part of me feels it is best compared to when you get a new pet after a previous one has passed.
Exploring TOTK’s Hyrule, even on the land level feels similar yet different.
You discover new exciting things on it, rediscover parts you may have forgotten or were always a favourite, sometimes you learn new things or have your perspective changed.
A lot of work has been put into the game to not make it just be a revisit. The sky islands add a plethora of extra exploration and great discoveries as well as a beautiful new view of Hyrule as you fall in from above.
The depths give Tears a darker side whilst being its own new type of investigation and all three of the layers do a wonderful job of symbiotically aiding each other in discoveries and progressions.
Mechanically the headline act is Ultrahand, it is almost like Nintendo saw all the crazy glitches and extreme modes of travel people had been sharing since BOTWs release and went “hold my beer”.
Ultrahand opens up creativity if you want it, great new puzzle mechanics that for me improve the overall enjoyment of shrines and most importantly more ways to explore.
Breath of the Wild allowing you to “climb anything” was so freeing, but being able to make some sort of air contraption has taken that one step beyond and it’s incredible.
Ultrahand may be the headline, the lead act of Link’s new abilities and cool new style but the ability that impresses me the most is Ascend.
Link being able to fly upwards and through terrain is not only a great way to help vertical traversal but it is simply a wild feat. When we were given previews I assumed ascend would be very limited, a modern day clawshot to be used only on very specific spaces, the places and depth in which it can be used however is astounding.
BOTW’s Sheikah Slate powers were and still are great but the powers in TOTK are greater, they’re more diverse, more impressive and honestly, just more fun.
When coming to talk about Tears in any form, be it writing this “review” or chatting with friends I don’t want to just gush about how good it is, it has to be compared to one of the best games ever and as an unfair task as that is that means that even the most minor issues need to be looked at and compared.
In a lot of my reviews I speak about friction, the sense of how easy it is to slide into a game, take the wheels, feel part of a world, become immersed and not be fighting against it. Be that via systems, graphics, options, mechanics, and TOTK is by no means a completely frictionless experience.
To point out many of these faults is the equivalent to saying a meal has a single grain of salt too many, the controls definitely feel strange, even with options to swap them and some of the menus (especially Fuse) are not as intuitive as you may expect. All of this however is so easy to forgive because it becomes second nature - the line “it gets good 30 hours in” is typically a terrible one that is often used in games but TOTK is not meant to be a short experience and getting comfortable becoming Link is something that will eventually come to most people.
A lot of the friction or discomfort in the controls, combinations and powers to me are a funny one, because essentially - it’s too good.
TOTK’s issue is that it “loves too much”. BOTW was so big that the only way to ever attempt to top it was throw everything at this game and sometimes that can mean the player is a little overwhelmed with not only their freedom in discovery and traversal but their discoveries in powers and just everything they can do. In that sense TOTK really is a sequel, Breath’s walking and crawling becomes Tear’s running and leaping and sometimes that comes before the player feels ready.
While continuing the extremely obvious comparison of this game to its former, one thing that comes to mind is once again the complaints that bonafide masterpiece Breath of the Wild did receive.
I will state here that weapon degradation was never bad, still isn’t and anyone who thinks otherwise shows little understanding in its genius, that conversation has continued for six years and will continue onwards and I do not want to give too much air to it within this review.
I will say however, something that may appease the degradation haters, the Master Sword doesn’t feel cool and powerful enough.
The more interesting and understandable issues with Breath of the Wild centered around dungeons, temples and how Divine Beasts and Shrines don’t compare positively in all aspects.
This is another six year old discussion, one about structure, personal preferences, the amount a game should lead and what makes a Zelda game. Cowardly I will not be writing about all of that because it is too much but I can see and understand many points of view.
The comparison now comes to be; how are TOTK’s shrines and temples versus BOTW’s and not only are they better but do they bring back any of that “classic Zelda” to this game.
Shrines are a shorter and simpler answer, I think Tears edges it here just because its powers are more interesting and the spread of the shrines and how you access them tends to be a little more interesting, the difference really though I feel is miniscule.
Temples in comparison to the Divine Beasts is a much more interesting and diverse answer.
I will say here that right at this very moment I believe I preferred the Temples by the smallest of margins, and I will also say now that I was never a Divine Beast disliker.
Both games do a very good job of not only making these much more vast and epic feeling places of puzzles and occasional fighting but both have absolutely fantastic lead ups which in many cases are the more memorable and enjoyable bits.
I can’t go through each on a case by case in detail because I can’t possibly spoil and take away the magic for people but I would say what the temples have in their favour is a much greater sense of variety and typically more interesting and exciting boss battles.
The Divine Beasts however felt more consistent in their enjoyment, some of the temples are far worse than others where the Beasts were on a fairly similar quality level.
Ranking them all would be a headache but I can foresee it being a somewhat sandwich like structure with Tears being to top and bottom crusts.
My final comparison and somewhat the final thoughts I have on these two Legends of Zelda are the stories.
Tears may be a little overwhelming for players but where it does handhold a little more is in its story and side objectives but by taking your hand it shows you some much more memorable and exciting scenes.
I enjoyed the plot that ran through BOTW and the final boss battles were great but TOTK has taken it to a much higher level. The plot, where it goes, its twists and turns are far more thought provoking and caused many more scenes where my mouth was agape or I was cheering at my screen.
Some of this ties back to bosses, some of this is simply down to cut scenes and a lot is down to vision and scope for me; Tears of the Kingdom just piques Breath of the Wild for me and that is down to the narrative and cinematic presentation it wraps it all up in.
The difference is so small. They are both 5 star games, 10/10’s but maybe one is a 97 percent while the other is 98.
They’re the two best presents you got at Christmas and TOTK takes the lead because the wrapping was just a little tidier.
I am certain that I wasn’t alone in the build up to Tears of the Kingdom’s release in feeling hesitant, concerned, possibly even scared that Nintendo would trip over this hurdle, that making a sequel to what many people consider the greatest game of all time and even the people who (for some reason) felt Breath of the Wild was overrated couldn’t deny had a huge impact on games and how we see them, both from the perspective of players and developers.
Could Nintendo catch lightning in a bottle twice? Would revisiting an existing Hyrule simply feel like a retread or just some big DLC?
How would they, how could they possibly improve on the exploration, the mechanics, the magic that the Switch game which sold more copies than machines had done?
Capturing the magic is a term that I have seen floating around before and since TOTK’s release, like so much about this game and games in general that “magic” is subjective.
To me it was an impossibility to capture the same magic BOTW did simply because so much of that magic was tied into the launch of the Nintendo Switch for many of it’s early adopters, myself included.
My stand on magic being captured is Nintendo succeeded, it is not “that” magic but a new variation on it - the romantic in me wants to describe it like falling in love again, the depressed anxious part of me feels it is best compared to when you get a new pet after a previous one has passed.
Exploring TOTK’s Hyrule, even on the land level feels similar yet different.
You discover new exciting things on it, rediscover parts you may have forgotten or were always a favourite, sometimes you learn new things or have your perspective changed.
A lot of work has been put into the game to not make it just be a revisit. The sky islands add a plethora of extra exploration and great discoveries as well as a beautiful new view of Hyrule as you fall in from above.
The depths give Tears a darker side whilst being its own new type of investigation and all three of the layers do a wonderful job of symbiotically aiding each other in discoveries and progressions.
Mechanically the headline act is Ultrahand, it is almost like Nintendo saw all the crazy glitches and extreme modes of travel people had been sharing since BOTWs release and went “hold my beer”.
Ultrahand opens up creativity if you want it, great new puzzle mechanics that for me improve the overall enjoyment of shrines and most importantly more ways to explore.
Breath of the Wild allowing you to “climb anything” was so freeing, but being able to make some sort of air contraption has taken that one step beyond and it’s incredible.
Ultrahand may be the headline, the lead act of Link’s new abilities and cool new style but the ability that impresses me the most is Ascend.
Link being able to fly upwards and through terrain is not only a great way to help vertical traversal but it is simply a wild feat. When we were given previews I assumed ascend would be very limited, a modern day clawshot to be used only on very specific spaces, the places and depth in which it can be used however is astounding.
BOTW’s Sheikah Slate powers were and still are great but the powers in TOTK are greater, they’re more diverse, more impressive and honestly, just more fun.
When coming to talk about Tears in any form, be it writing this “review” or chatting with friends I don’t want to just gush about how good it is, it has to be compared to one of the best games ever and as an unfair task as that is that means that even the most minor issues need to be looked at and compared.
In a lot of my reviews I speak about friction, the sense of how easy it is to slide into a game, take the wheels, feel part of a world, become immersed and not be fighting against it. Be that via systems, graphics, options, mechanics, and TOTK is by no means a completely frictionless experience.
To point out many of these faults is the equivalent to saying a meal has a single grain of salt too many, the controls definitely feel strange, even with options to swap them and some of the menus (especially Fuse) are not as intuitive as you may expect. All of this however is so easy to forgive because it becomes second nature - the line “it gets good 30 hours in” is typically a terrible one that is often used in games but TOTK is not meant to be a short experience and getting comfortable becoming Link is something that will eventually come to most people.
A lot of the friction or discomfort in the controls, combinations and powers to me are a funny one, because essentially - it’s too good.
TOTK’s issue is that it “loves too much”. BOTW was so big that the only way to ever attempt to top it was throw everything at this game and sometimes that can mean the player is a little overwhelmed with not only their freedom in discovery and traversal but their discoveries in powers and just everything they can do. In that sense TOTK really is a sequel, Breath’s walking and crawling becomes Tear’s running and leaping and sometimes that comes before the player feels ready.
While continuing the extremely obvious comparison of this game to its former, one thing that comes to mind is once again the complaints that bonafide masterpiece Breath of the Wild did receive.
I will state here that weapon degradation was never bad, still isn’t and anyone who thinks otherwise shows little understanding in its genius, that conversation has continued for six years and will continue onwards and I do not want to give too much air to it within this review.
I will say however, something that may appease the degradation haters, the Master Sword doesn’t feel cool and powerful enough.
The more interesting and understandable issues with Breath of the Wild centered around dungeons, temples and how Divine Beasts and Shrines don’t compare positively in all aspects.
This is another six year old discussion, one about structure, personal preferences, the amount a game should lead and what makes a Zelda game. Cowardly I will not be writing about all of that because it is too much but I can see and understand many points of view.
The comparison now comes to be; how are TOTK’s shrines and temples versus BOTW’s and not only are they better but do they bring back any of that “classic Zelda” to this game.
Shrines are a shorter and simpler answer, I think Tears edges it here just because its powers are more interesting and the spread of the shrines and how you access them tends to be a little more interesting, the difference really though I feel is miniscule.
Temples in comparison to the Divine Beasts is a much more interesting and diverse answer.
I will say here that right at this very moment I believe I preferred the Temples by the smallest of margins, and I will also say now that I was never a Divine Beast disliker.
Both games do a very good job of not only making these much more vast and epic feeling places of puzzles and occasional fighting but both have absolutely fantastic lead ups which in many cases are the more memorable and enjoyable bits.
I can’t go through each on a case by case in detail because I can’t possibly spoil and take away the magic for people but I would say what the temples have in their favour is a much greater sense of variety and typically more interesting and exciting boss battles.
The Divine Beasts however felt more consistent in their enjoyment, some of the temples are far worse than others where the Beasts were on a fairly similar quality level.
Ranking them all would be a headache but I can foresee it being a somewhat sandwich like structure with Tears being to top and bottom crusts.
My final comparison and somewhat the final thoughts I have on these two Legends of Zelda are the stories.
Tears may be a little overwhelming for players but where it does handhold a little more is in its story and side objectives but by taking your hand it shows you some much more memorable and exciting scenes.
I enjoyed the plot that ran through BOTW and the final boss battles were great but TOTK has taken it to a much higher level. The plot, where it goes, its twists and turns are far more thought provoking and caused many more scenes where my mouth was agape or I was cheering at my screen.
Some of this ties back to bosses, some of this is simply down to cut scenes and a lot is down to vision and scope for me; Tears of the Kingdom just piques Breath of the Wild for me and that is down to the narrative and cinematic presentation it wraps it all up in.
The difference is so small. They are both 5 star games, 10/10’s but maybe one is a 97 percent while the other is 98.
They’re the two best presents you got at Christmas and TOTK takes the lead because the wrapping was just a little tidier.