Now, before anyone attempts to kill me, hear me out.

In terms of enjoyment, this was, without a doubt, one of the most addictive and enjoyable experiences I've ever had in my life. Having already grown fond of BoTW, Tears of the Kingdom genuinely felt like BoTW+ in so many ways, but also quite literally. Perfect 10/10 in terms of how much I enjoyed my playthrough. I fucking screamed when I made my way to the bottom of the Forgotten Foundation and found Zelda’s fucking torch from the very fucking beginning of the game.

The difficulty was a solid step up in many ways, with many overworld enemies capable of killing me in a single hit upon landing. This, overall, made ToTK much more demanding of the player in terms of how they gathered and managed their resources to overcome the challenges.

Which is why I think Fuse is the most fun Rune to play around with in my playthrough, primarily due to the sheer diversity you have in terms of weapons thanks to it. For once, monster loot drops actually serve a purpose other than Rupee fodder, because using them in tandem with your weapons actually gives you a varied array of choices in terms of how you want to customise your weapons. Obviously, there are some caveats and that’s the fact that most of the time, you’d want to opt for raw power (the Black Horns are super good for most of the game), but there are some merits to the Fuse ability by farming Lizalfos in various regions, as Fire/Electric/Ice Breath Lizalfos add their respective elemental effect to any weapon you fuse them with, essentially giving you the Frostblade/Flameblade from BoTW… but not as good, admittedly. Personally, my biggest gripe with Fuse is the tedious menu scrolling you have to do sometimes looking for a specific item in your Materials section. Couldn't they have, like, added a 'Favourites' section for stuff that I actively use to Fuse with my arrows and weapons?

I'd like to also give some praise to the dungeons in this game, which, while easier than I wished they were, actually feel like they have core identities to them now. While BoTW's Divine Beasts mostly followed the same archetype and required the player to usually just 'rotate the beast', the Temples are all distinct in their own way, each having their own specific and unique gimmick to traverse it. I vividly remember solving one puzzle in the Lightning Temple by literally backtracking to the basement and using Ascend to cheese my way into my objective... only to realise that it was completely unnecessary since all I needed to do was remove a few hidden blocks to access the objective. Fuck. But I do think that it's genuinely a great touch that the game designers took into account this method of solving the puzzle, and kept it in for the more creative-minded people. Another thing I really admire is how a good number of the dungeon puzzles actually take from the shrine puzzles - it really ties the experience together, giving the shrines a bit more significance by saying 'OK, you've done this shrine before the dungeon - now what have you learnt?'.

More of my praises, really, go to the pre-dungeon events, as all of them clearly took a bigger enhancement in terms of sheer scale. In particular I'd like to denote the Zora puzzle, which, while much shorter than the other pre-dungeon set pieces, was clearly crafted with old-school Zelda puzzles in mind, and actually tested my intelligence and game knowledge to a surprising degree.

And of course, come on, this is BoTW+. It's literally BoTW but with so much more to do, from the Depths, to the Skies, to all the fucking caves and the treasures, even the callbacks to every other Zelda that came before, hello? The sound design is immaculate and arguably a massive step-up compared to BoTW, and visually (discounting the performance issues) this game fucking slays with how well put together some of the cutscenes and visual aesthetics are. This is still very much THE game for everyone, from those who like slightly brainless button-mashing combat, to those who like exploring a vast, open world, to those who like finding secret areas and solving puzzles, and to those who like Minecraft because they introduced Ultrahand-

I did not like Ultrahand.

Look, I get why the creative-minded fanatics are fawning all over this thing, but for me? I’ve very much been a ‘play it simple’ type of player, and Ultrahand felt like Minecraft crafting but with 10 trillion extra steps. Just the way that you have to always craft mostly the same thing over and over and over and over by dragging the item manually in a slow and tedious fashion and then manually adjusting them so they fit exactly where you want them to be constantly is incredibly draining and time-consuming. This is where Autobuild would’ve solved these issues, until you realise that they only allow you 8 favorited contraptions. Not really a practical solution when you’re forced to build slightly different renditions of the same fanplane 1 million times. Maybe it’s just an issue of personal taste, but I genuinely don’t see the appeal of Ultrahand the way others do. Maybe I’ll like it more when I actually do get to torturing Koroks, though.

The game actually did take a tank into my enjoyment as well with the Spirit Temple as a result. With me not already being a huge fan of Ultrahand to begin with, having an entire dungeon revolve exclusively around Ultrahand and its finicky control scheme rubbed me the wrong way. Fuck the Left Arm Depot and the stupid Big Wheels in particular. Not to mention that the later traversal to the actual temple heavily pushes for you to use Mineru’s construct rather than go past it through your own means. The less said about the boss fight, the better because as long as you have an iron ball and a Blaster you can basically win without taking damage because your attack pattern is the exact. Same. every. Time. with. No. Difficulty. Whatsoever.

I literally couldn’t care less when she fucking died but couldn’t even do that because they left me wondering who the fuck is inheriting her spirit stone.

Speaking of, the story in this game was kindaaaaaaaaa ass……… yeah, I know, I’m sorry, but while BoTW’s main story isn’t as ambitious in terms of scale and plot, at least it was serviceable. Here? Not as much. Some positives first: I think the whole Imprisonment War arc itself was fine, and piecing together the fragments of story you get via the Dragon’s Tears quest was a fun time (certainly a lot more fun than BoTW’s memory hunting). I like the concept of Zelda sacrificing her free will to restore the Master Sword by becoming a dragon purely out of her sheer faith in Link’s ability to defeat Ganondorf once and for all. The shit revolving around Zelda was incredible, really, very powerful, and that applies to the ending as well as she laments on how elated she is to finally be restored back to her own timeline… home. But uhm ackshually she never powered up the Master Sword since when you retrieve it it still only does 30 base power so 0/10 game no consistency-

The problem? I finished The Dragon’s Tears before even attempting a second dungeon. And by doing so, I completely broke the story structure and the pacing. See, by the time you finish the quest, it’s super obvious that Zelda is, in fact, the Light Dragon (if the Silent Princesses that spawn after you obtain the 12th tear wasn’t a telling enough clue I don’t know what is). And while the scene itself is really emotional, it actively hurts the fake Zelda sideplot, because as I trudged through the other 3 dungeons, my mind kept asking why Link doesn’t just explain that the Zelda they’ve been seeing is a fake. Either that, or Link doesn’t read context clues like we do and is a fucking idiot. In fact, Link never addresses the fake Zelda thing through his discovery from this quest ever, because the game does it for you anyway when you storm Hyrule Castle.

Then there are the 4 regional side-plots. Look, I love all 4 of them, I really do, but something about them just really doesn’t sell me the way the Champions did in BoTW. I think part of that comes down to the fact that we really don’t get to establish the bond between Link and these characters enough. Sure, they did show up in BoTW to help you get on the Divine Beasts (which isn’t even the case for Tulin since it was his dad that helped us instead), but ultimately they play second fiddle in terms of importance because the game chose instead (rightfully) to focus on the Champions, who each have their own distinct relationship with Link (Mipha being his simp, Daruk being that badass chill friend, Falco being the edgy rival and Urbosa being kinda the strong mom vibe of the gang?). Another important thing to note is that BoTW does show Link vibing with the Champions, which, while not really as substantial as most games, is serviceable enough to emphasise that these are, in fact, close friends of Link.

Here… not so much. Ultimately I think Sidon’s story in ToTK is by default the best one since there is a justifiable (but still iffy) motive for his character growth (he needs to let go of the burden and fear of losing the people he loves), and the fact that out of all the characters that last showed up in BoTW, he’s perhaps the one who shares the most screen time alongside Link. But even that plays second fiddle in this game to his destiny as one of the Sages. In fact, the same applies to all 4 sages, and it’s fucking egregious. Once you’ve seen a cutscene of Link and his companion obtaining a Sage Stone, you’ve basically seen all of them. This is where I think ToTK’s open nature hurts its storytelling the most: because the game has to assume that any of these 4 dungeons could’ve been your first, every cutscene has to play out the same way - ancestor shows up, successor comments on how they’re the voice they’ve been hearing, ancestor explains that they helped Rauru in the past as a sage, they lost to ganon, zelda comes in to tell the ancestor to help link, successor hesitates but accepts their role and gives lonk they’re powers bla bla bla fucking bla when you see the same cutscene four times it gets super boring.

This especially hurts because other than their ‘destinies’, each character actually has their own self-contained character arc going on. I’ve mentioned Sidon earlier, but frankly, his character arc is the most acceptable one. Riju’s problem is that as chief of the Gerudos, she has a lot of weight to bear and wants to be strong enough to carry her people, but is still too young and needs help. Then Link comes in with his arrows and… the problem is solved? Like girlie still ends up not being able to use her lightning powers without Link’s assistance and the problem is solved? She really needs to just drop the scimitars and take up archery. Tulin is the direct contrast of this: he’s also super young, but super capable and incredibly talented, and desperately wants to prove himself to his father as an independent figure. And while I think the message of ‘working as a team’ is a nice message to deliver, it doesn’t really matter much when Link is still doing most of the heavy work? Like I was the one beating Colduga for the most part? And then apparently the problem is solved, too, because upon his return his dad sees him as finally worthy of Falco’s bow or something idk it’s better than Riju’s I guess.

Yunobo has it the worst, though. His character arc was… artificially induced because we could’ve had a really deep introspective look at a young man who started a company with the goal of helping others, only to get in over his head with greed and be consumed by his desire to make money selling drugged meat. But nope, that conflict was induced by fake Zelda giving him a mask or something and when he’s broken free of it boom problem solved! There’s not even time for Yunobo to reflect on his mistakes or anything, we gotta make him the Fire Sage!!! Because that’s so fucking cool! Destiny! What a thing, right?????

And finally, there’s the heavy lack of payoff that these Sages provide in terms of the story. In BoTW, when the four Champions exert their payback on Calamity Ganon on the Divine Beasts they were killed on, it felt earned. It felt like justice was finally being served on evil as light took one step closer to ultimate victory. It had a profound impact on actual gameplay as well, since their attacks actually delete half of the final boss’ health bar. In ToTK? Well they show up to help Link fight common enemies, and then step in when Ganondorf summons shadows of himself to distract Link, but… that’s about it. They then also get gracelessly tossed aside for Phase 3 of the Ganondorf fight, and never actually show up until the final cutscene of the game. To their defense, the Champions are well… Champions with years of combat training and the Sages, despite their powers, are literally just a group of dumb fucking kids, but it still sucks that they could’ve had so much more impact on the endgame than they actually did.

But hey, by clearing a dungeon, each of the sages will have their spirit follow you around in the overworld! Which is… honestly a mixed bag. First thing to note is that I think 4 out of the 5 sages have really cool abilities - Tulin’s ability gives you an extra horizontal push when you’re trying to explore a new location in the skies (it also helps you quickly rush over to another platform, reducing the stamina consumption needed to climb it), Yunobo’s ability makes cracked walls significantly easier to break, and also has the niche of being able to OHKO Ice Breath Lizalfos. Sidon’s ability is an AOE water attack but more importantly, a free parry, and Riju’s ability is a cool AOE lightning strike, much like Urbosa’s. What makes these abilities much better to use is that unlike BoTW’s power ups, these abilities have relatively low recharge time and are much more useful in normal gameplay (Mipha’s Grace and the Remote Bomb are sorely missed, though). And all of the sages have the additional perk of being able to do damage with their weapons. This can lead to really cool shit like you and a group of people beating the ever-loving shit out of a bandolier of monster pirates, and also really funny shit like you and a group of people ganging up on a stupid villain in a stupid costume (yes, I’m talking about you, Kohga.)

The problem, however, is how you use these abilities - you have to physically get close to the spirit whose ability you want to activate. And when you have 4 of these spirits running around trying to attack enemies as well, it becomes a problem. I suppose it does contribute to the realism of the chaos of a battle, but all it really does is create more headaches as you frantically run around being unable to focus on the fight while finding the spirit you want access to. Sometimes you’d also inadvertently contact the wrong spirit and end up wasting a gust charge (the one true downside of Tulin), or accidentally wasting Sidon’s parry on a fodder monster. Mineru’s arguably the fucking worst of the bunch, though, since her construct actually gets in the way a lot of the time (sometimes her attacks do a lot more harm than good) and for some reason even though she can move perfectly fine on her own when left to her own devices, boarding her consumes YOUR FUCKING CELL BATTERY FOR SOME REASON LIKE HUHHHH????????? ??? Fuck Mineru. Honestly this problem wasn’t even hard to solve, just free up a little more space on the radial wheel for runes, how hard could that have been?

Overall, though, I feel like this game’s biggest problem is how it tries to do a lot more… without actually giving much incentive to do all of it. Like sure, for those who love exploring the unknown, all this extra stuff is a fever dream for them, but then there’s the fact that there’s 1000 fucking Korok seeds, 152 shrines, 7 bargainer statues, 58 wells, a shitload of armor etc. and besides the armor and all the neat weapons you can find and the heart containers, nothing else really… incentivises you to get everything. Like, once I got the first Bargainer Statue and the subsequent Heart Container, I was done. Once I fully upgraded the Hylian Set and the Champion’s Leathers, I was done. Once I found enough shrines to get an additional stamina wheel and 20 more Heart Containers (a whopping 104 of them), I was essentially done with everything I wanted out of this game. I guess the reward for all this is the experience itself, but really it just feels bloated and overwhelming, as much as I hate to admit it.

There’s also the obvious issue of framerate drops, but I think that’s moreso a problem with the Switch hardware being fucking ASS rather than a game-exclusive issue. I think in the end, between ToTK and BoTW, I’d say I’d definitely return to ToTK simply because there’s so much more to do and so much more to see. It has a lot of significant flaws, yes, but that doesn’t cut into my enjoyment of it much. I’d be lying, however, in saying that ToTK is a better game than BoTW.

Because it simply is too flawed. But maybe that’s a good thing. Sometimes, it’s our flaws that make us whole.

P.S.: I’d like to say that Tulin is literally the most marketable plushie ever look at this fucker he’s adorable I’d literally buy a plushie of him if there ever was one.

Final rating: 6/10. 10/10 enjoyment tho.