*Played to credits, haven't gone out of my way to complete the Special World.

It's a grand old time. I played the whole game in co-op with my sister and had a blast with it, with no two levels sharing the same identity in an effort to break away from the homogenized NSMB formula. The music and visuals are peak whimsy.

The only knock against it is that the game feels at times painfully easy with a few exceptions, which I somewhat understand given the young target demographic. I only wish the actual hard platforming--like the Special World levels I only stumbled upon occasionally--was less of a chore to unlock.

At the Switch's launch, Breath of the Wild was a revolution for the 3D Zelda formula and open-world adventure games in general. Six years later, the direct sequel Tears of the Kingdom arrives not as an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle twice, but rather refine a solid foundation to near-perfection. With its incredible scope in world across the land, underground, and sky, plus the wealth of content, this is Nintendo at peak performance. For those who enjoyed BoTW, it's a must play that hits all the right notes, though by the end, I wish it was a little more adventurous in the story department.

Starting with gameplay--if you're familiar with how Breath of the Wild handles, then you should have no trouble picking up Tears. But if you haven't played the first game, combat is a snappy affair, rewarding your ability to hit those perfect dodges as well as your preparation for any individual encounter of trash mobs or big overworld bosses; on the other end, traversal will see you climbing mountains and conquer hostile, yet beautiful terrain to fill out the world map. Quality of life improvements include being able to select your slate/pad powers from a wheel menu for faster switching, three unlockable travel medallions instead of just one, and a MUCH more consistent stock of elemental arrows. The new slate powers are a discard-and-draw from Breath of the Wild's old power set, but on the whole, you'll find that the utility is much more pronounced: cryonis will not be missed. For better or for worse, most mechanics are left untouched from the prior game: weapon durability, leveling up through shrines, and cooking is just as you remember it. I won't pour over every change, but the ability to jam weapons and spare parts together was a genius way to keep the grind from getting stale, and I applaud the dev team for it.

Moving onto aesthetics, the game's visual appeal is top-notch, able to balance soft beauty with the grotesque. The gentle yellow hues of the Sky Island, smattered with relics of a bygone golden age, contrast wonderfully with the foreboding darkness of subterranen Hyrule, a monster-ridden hellhole with vast gulches and stone spires. The character designs were also a huge hit: King Rauru sells the image of a formidable warrior-sage with his tall stature and cool threads, and the new take on Ganondorf is fresh (...rotten?) both as a dessicated corpse or a revived demon king. I can't say much for the soundtrack other than "it's good," always enough to carry an area's ambience—my personal favorite being the main theme. As for vocal performances (ENG), Matthew Mercer absolutely kills it as Ganondorf, but I don't think you needed to hear that from me.

The story is where it loses me, if only slightly. I love the backstory of Hyrule in its infancy, with Rauru and Sonia as the first rulers. But the present story lacks for me. The Sages barring Zelda herself aren't compelling characters, relegated to an obligatory dungeon and predictable trajectory to joining your cause of defending Hyrule. Compared to the Champions of Breath of the Wild, the characters are remarkably flat despite working with similar screentime. Ganondorf doesn't display much depth beyond a lust for power, and although I love his dominating presence in any scene he's in, I wish we got something more out of him. Link is in a similar spot, likable, but lacking character moments outside of his protectiveness for Zelda; this is a little less excusable, given that this is the second game we're commandeering this character over a LONG game, and he still feels emotionless half the time. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess both handled the Silent Protagonist trope better, both of it through expressions.

Despite my gripes with the plot, when the game wants to do big, cinematic moments, it succeeds with aplomb. Several sequences in the game elicit gasps, and a lot of shots were entirely screenshot-worthy. What it lacks on the character front, it compensates for in utterly beautiful presentation, especially at the climax, which I consider a marked improvement over Breath of the Wild.

Taken as a whole, Tears of the Kingdom is a game worth experiencing, a once-in-a-lifetime epic in the medium. The things that made Breath of the Wild great are acknowledged and improved upon in the sequel, preserving the same sense of wonder to compel the player forward.