When a game takes almost 3 months to finish, alongside all the other activities in life, I find myself having one of two reactions. For something like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, I'm glad to be done. I liked the game, but had some pretty big issues with it, and by the end of my long journey through, I was ready to move on. And then there are games like Tears of the Kingdom.
Not that I wasn't ready to move on after 85 hours of play (which even then is conservative compared to what many others have put into this game), but it was more a bittersweet feeling. Watching the credits roll and the post-credits stinger (which I won't spoil here) filled me with both a sense of accomplishment and a sense of sadness as I'd be leaving this world and characters behind for the foreseeable future.
Tears of the Kingdom, despite still having some issues here and there as all games do, was overall a masterpiece whose experience for me at least added up to more than just the sum of its parts. This is especially surprising given my reaction to its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. I didn't hate it by any means; you can easily dive into my profile and see I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars. I really liked it, but I was never quite caught up in all the hype like the others. As a longtime Zelda fan, I was thrown by the change to the formula and massively disappointed by the key returning features: the dungeons were boring and too similar, and the bosses were also wildly underwhelming. No item gimicks, no unique aesthetics, and what I was given instead for the main portion of the quest was a vast open world that was fun to explore but held little depth. There wasn't a lot of enemy variety or things to do outside Shrines which had some neat moments, but also some templates like the motion control puzzles and combat challenges I very much didn't like.
Needless to say, I was looking for some changes for a potential sequel, but something else strange also happened. As someone pretty invested in the video game space, I kept coming across articles and videos that would occasionally mention or even focus on Breath of the Wild over the years. I still hold to my own personal opinion and experience of the game, but it was interesting to hear detailed thoughts from people who did ride all the hype back in 2017. They did things and found things that I just never grasped on my own playthrough. They detailed design theory that helped me understand what hooked so many people, even myself to a certain extent. Going into Tears of the Kingdom now, I felt more like I "got it" from the get go. I was no longer an old Zelda fan thrown by the changes and reeling from cognitive dissonance. I approached the game as an informed, willing participant to what it had to offer.
I think this attitude helped a lot. I actively sought out things to explore and more intentionally used systems like the cooking. I found myself working with the game instead of bumping up against it, and it made the early hours enjoyable which is key because I didn't yet understand all of what had changed. What really drives this game home for me is they did address a lot of the things I had issues with.
To start, the world feels so much more alive! There's more to do than enemy camps, Koroks, and shrines though those still exist. Caves, wells and the entire new sky and depths levels completely augment the experience. I had a blast moving through each area and finding all the unique and fun things to do there. Not that it's infinitely varied; adding more to a thing only extends how long you can go before getting burnt out on the "formula" so to speak. Yet I found myself getting tired of the system closer to the end of my 85 hours with the game as opposed to halfway through.
Enemy variety is so much better too. There are multiple groupings and even technically different "factions" of enemies, all with unique attributes. The field bosses get a nice upgrade too, adding Gleeoks while altering some of the old ones for new challenges or rewards. The main bosses too were SO much better. Each dungeon now has its own unique boss that utilizes its respective Sage's powers, kind of like a dungeon item. These dungeons too are more unique mechanically and aesthetically though they use the same formula from BotW where you have to explore each dungeon to interact with a certain number of "switches" for each temple's objective. This doesn't come across as repetitive though because of the more aesthetic and overall structural differences.
And then there's the shrines because, really now, they're still one of the core pieces of the puzzle here. Shrine variety is up, and the puzzles themselves just benefit from the new abilities this go round anyway. Motion control puzzles are gone, and combat challenges are replaced by a couple types of tutorial and combat/stealth challenges that have further variety. I no longer dreaded opening up a shrine to just see a little mini boss I'd fought 5 billion other times.
This is all not to mention other things that have just been fleshed out with this formula. The new abilities are fantastic and offer so much more flexibility. I had a blast using these for various different solutions to problems or even just getting around. Every time I tried some harebrained scheme and it worked, I felt like a genius. Building vehicles and attaching upgrades to your weapons was fun as well, but also helped it feel like the options for traversing the world or dealing with weapon durability and power were so much more wide open. The story too is far more involved and brings with it a grander scope. No longer are we waking these beasts to fight the monster of Calamity Ganon, we're more closely interacting with characters from across Hyrule to awaken sage powers, find Zelda, and face down Ganondorf who is a full character this go round. That emotional investment added here really adds even more hooks into the player.
As a whole, this came across for me at least as a much smoother, more epic, and more engaging experience. There are some flaws still, I mentioned a couple above and could go on about a few others. The sky and depths areas are cool and add some new stuff, but they could have added more. The sky especially starts getting stale after a bit. The graphics too, while artistically excellent, are technically hampered by the Switch's aging hardware. But all of these little nitpicks never really marred the experience itself like the issues from BotW did for me. Instead, I felt immersed in this world, journeying through to experience all it had to offer (or a hell of a lot of it before putting it on the backburner for now), meeting all sorts of different characters, and working to save this world from the Demon King Ganondorf.
All of this is to say that yes, this time I bought into the hype. I think if you're a fan of BotW or someone who wasn't thrilled with it like I was, Tears of the Kingdom is worth the shot. It's a more fully realized vision of what was attempted before, and yet I'm still excited to see what they could do even further. It's an interesting time to be a gamer right now.
We have release like this and Baldur's Gate 3 pushing the envelope further while other releases continue to perpetuate existing problems we've been complaining about for a long time like microtransactions, bad PC ports, and bad launches in general regardless of platform. Don't let yourself miss out on one of this year's gems with everything going on.
Not that I wasn't ready to move on after 85 hours of play (which even then is conservative compared to what many others have put into this game), but it was more a bittersweet feeling. Watching the credits roll and the post-credits stinger (which I won't spoil here) filled me with both a sense of accomplishment and a sense of sadness as I'd be leaving this world and characters behind for the foreseeable future.
Tears of the Kingdom, despite still having some issues here and there as all games do, was overall a masterpiece whose experience for me at least added up to more than just the sum of its parts. This is especially surprising given my reaction to its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. I didn't hate it by any means; you can easily dive into my profile and see I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars. I really liked it, but I was never quite caught up in all the hype like the others. As a longtime Zelda fan, I was thrown by the change to the formula and massively disappointed by the key returning features: the dungeons were boring and too similar, and the bosses were also wildly underwhelming. No item gimicks, no unique aesthetics, and what I was given instead for the main portion of the quest was a vast open world that was fun to explore but held little depth. There wasn't a lot of enemy variety or things to do outside Shrines which had some neat moments, but also some templates like the motion control puzzles and combat challenges I very much didn't like.
Needless to say, I was looking for some changes for a potential sequel, but something else strange also happened. As someone pretty invested in the video game space, I kept coming across articles and videos that would occasionally mention or even focus on Breath of the Wild over the years. I still hold to my own personal opinion and experience of the game, but it was interesting to hear detailed thoughts from people who did ride all the hype back in 2017. They did things and found things that I just never grasped on my own playthrough. They detailed design theory that helped me understand what hooked so many people, even myself to a certain extent. Going into Tears of the Kingdom now, I felt more like I "got it" from the get go. I was no longer an old Zelda fan thrown by the changes and reeling from cognitive dissonance. I approached the game as an informed, willing participant to what it had to offer.
I think this attitude helped a lot. I actively sought out things to explore and more intentionally used systems like the cooking. I found myself working with the game instead of bumping up against it, and it made the early hours enjoyable which is key because I didn't yet understand all of what had changed. What really drives this game home for me is they did address a lot of the things I had issues with.
To start, the world feels so much more alive! There's more to do than enemy camps, Koroks, and shrines though those still exist. Caves, wells and the entire new sky and depths levels completely augment the experience. I had a blast moving through each area and finding all the unique and fun things to do there. Not that it's infinitely varied; adding more to a thing only extends how long you can go before getting burnt out on the "formula" so to speak. Yet I found myself getting tired of the system closer to the end of my 85 hours with the game as opposed to halfway through.
Enemy variety is so much better too. There are multiple groupings and even technically different "factions" of enemies, all with unique attributes. The field bosses get a nice upgrade too, adding Gleeoks while altering some of the old ones for new challenges or rewards. The main bosses too were SO much better. Each dungeon now has its own unique boss that utilizes its respective Sage's powers, kind of like a dungeon item. These dungeons too are more unique mechanically and aesthetically though they use the same formula from BotW where you have to explore each dungeon to interact with a certain number of "switches" for each temple's objective. This doesn't come across as repetitive though because of the more aesthetic and overall structural differences.
And then there's the shrines because, really now, they're still one of the core pieces of the puzzle here. Shrine variety is up, and the puzzles themselves just benefit from the new abilities this go round anyway. Motion control puzzles are gone, and combat challenges are replaced by a couple types of tutorial and combat/stealth challenges that have further variety. I no longer dreaded opening up a shrine to just see a little mini boss I'd fought 5 billion other times.
This is all not to mention other things that have just been fleshed out with this formula. The new abilities are fantastic and offer so much more flexibility. I had a blast using these for various different solutions to problems or even just getting around. Every time I tried some harebrained scheme and it worked, I felt like a genius. Building vehicles and attaching upgrades to your weapons was fun as well, but also helped it feel like the options for traversing the world or dealing with weapon durability and power were so much more wide open. The story too is far more involved and brings with it a grander scope. No longer are we waking these beasts to fight the monster of Calamity Ganon, we're more closely interacting with characters from across Hyrule to awaken sage powers, find Zelda, and face down Ganondorf who is a full character this go round. That emotional investment added here really adds even more hooks into the player.
As a whole, this came across for me at least as a much smoother, more epic, and more engaging experience. There are some flaws still, I mentioned a couple above and could go on about a few others. The sky and depths areas are cool and add some new stuff, but they could have added more. The sky especially starts getting stale after a bit. The graphics too, while artistically excellent, are technically hampered by the Switch's aging hardware. But all of these little nitpicks never really marred the experience itself like the issues from BotW did for me. Instead, I felt immersed in this world, journeying through to experience all it had to offer (or a hell of a lot of it before putting it on the backburner for now), meeting all sorts of different characters, and working to save this world from the Demon King Ganondorf.
All of this is to say that yes, this time I bought into the hype. I think if you're a fan of BotW or someone who wasn't thrilled with it like I was, Tears of the Kingdom is worth the shot. It's a more fully realized vision of what was attempted before, and yet I'm still excited to see what they could do even further. It's an interesting time to be a gamer right now.
We have release like this and Baldur's Gate 3 pushing the envelope further while other releases continue to perpetuate existing problems we've been complaining about for a long time like microtransactions, bad PC ports, and bad launches in general regardless of platform. Don't let yourself miss out on one of this year's gems with everything going on.