If this were to release instead of Breath of the Wild, I would have given the game a 4.5. As a sequel, I'm left unsatisfied by what it could have been. I'm sure the game had a large development time, but there simply wasn't enough changes in the game to wow me. I know it sounds silly to say so, but Tears of the Kingdom feels like it could have been a huge DLC story to Breath of the Wild, like Torna to Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

The original exhausted me of the open-world gameplay loop, so being placed into a familiar, yet not exactly the same Hyrule didn't really excite me. However, the beginning sky island was pretty cool! I thought - if the game kept me up there for a while, I would be in for a treat. After the tutorial island ended, you're plopped back into Hyrule, open to do whatever you want. Well, I wanted my glider, so I went with story progression.

Things started to feel a bit too familiar, so I journeyed for any new experiences my eyes peeped. I saw the depths and went straight there - and for the first 20 minutes, I was enthralled. It was so cool! It gave me the feeling of entering the nether in Minecraft for the first time. We know it wasn't a challenging, scary part of the game, but it FELT like it since it was so new. Well, that feeling lasted just for a tiny bit, and while the high was great, the low came swarming back, as it was just a lot of walking around and spamming the glowing plant stuff to see where you're going. Just climbing up and down, avoiding enemies, finding nostalgic armor that ended up being mostly useless, and that's really it. I realized there wasn't a lot of reward in it for me besides finding more land.

The same can be said for the sky islands. Some decent shrines/puzzles here and there, but it took way too long to get to these areas, and the payoff for doing so just wasn't enough for me. I realized I was in for BOTW 2.0 here, and I get that it's not for me.

I decided to tackle the dungeons and get the game over with. Following the story... was laughable. Another sad attempt at a 'story' by modern Nintendo. There feels like no stakes, the cutscenes can be laughably bad (Link, say that isn't Zelda, this is the 4th time you've seen her ghost like that), and the cutscenes at the end of the dungeons... pretty much repeat, because you can do any dungeon in any order. ????????? Well anyways, the dungeons themselves are pretty mediocre. I'm not sure why they couldn't go with traditional dungeons, but what we got are pretty much the divine beasts, but a little more lackluster. The theming is just basic rock/land, with a little smudge of fire/water/sand/ice in the corners here and there. While some of the gimmicks were pretty cool (zero gravity was very fun), the impact they made on the dungeon was non-existent to me, since the solutions they were looking for were all saved with making something as simple as bridges or ascending to another floor. When there are a million keys to a single door, creativity can work well, but things can end up being very... simple? Easy? Huh? Why is this game so easy?

Difficulty is a huge problem in this game. Why on earth can I pause the game to insta-heal whenever I want? Even mid hitstun?! Let me be punished for bad gameplay - we have autosaves now! I'm not sure why this game needs to reinvent the whole way Zelda is. The current battle system, with Zelda style of HEALING alone, would make quarrels so much more enjoyable because I don't have that security of knowing I already won the battle. Running around and avoiding attacks to get hearts for healing is such a nice accent to the way of combat. If they don't want that, at least disable pause when I'm in the middle of combat. and why is the only Zelda combat thing you retain is the obvious boss philosophy of classic Zeldas?! No more big eyes to shoot man, the little mini boss guy is enough...

I'm railing on the game too much now, so I'll just list what I liked and be done with it.
- Zero gravity water dungeon was hype, let you do a lot of unique gameplay platforming/tricks
- Boat/rising section before the wind dungeon was so atmospheric and enjoyable
- Zonai devices were cool, but were a pain to set up/use for long times as they disappear after a timer
- Fuse ability was great solution to the durability problem - I had no issues with durability in this game thanks to that. That did not solve the problem of feeling rewarded when I opened chests or explored cool areas though lol
- Ascend was neat and helped speed up some things, but kinda broke the dungeons and difficult segments