The longest game I've ever played, something close to 200 hours by the end, and I enjoyed all of it, maybe it took me a while to get into it but when it does, the story is so gripping, these characters became a part of my life, it's an amazing journey that just keeps building and building toward a truly amazing ending... or well, at least my ending was amazing, but they should all be, because they're your ending. The internet might have you believe there are right choices and wrong choices, things that'll lead you to miss out on this or that, but the game itself will never do that. Whatever you do in this game, it never ever feels "wrong", like the game didn't want you to do it. The game is always willing to make your choices feel meaningful and justified, there's a respect between the storytellers and the players, and what results from that is magical because the storytellers are damn good at their job.

I could nitpick about it but the little issues are essentially irrelevant in the context of everything else here. Was unsure about the rating but I can't give it lower, for everything this game has been for the past few months of my life. 10/10, deserved GotY, hopefully I can beat some shorter games now and/or get my life back

major gigantic boss battle about to ensue
Character: "I can't get up there on my own! Any ideas, Link?
Me: well I don't know, maybe we should try using the pre-made Zonai wing with 4 fans and 2 batteries that just so happens to be placed right in front of us in this crucial moment?

Sigh.

I'll admit it straight away, I can see where people are seeing the unrivalled 10/10 masterpiece everyone seems to think this is. It takes a game that was already widely beloved and gives us more of it, way more. It builds on that game's fundamental idea of player agency and inventiveness by adding in new mechanics and systems that add a whole new level of creativity to the mix, allowing you to craft weapons and build structures out of like, absolutely anything? And that these innovative systems work as well as they do, in a time when far more basic games get away with barely running at all, is really impressive, especially considering that it's on underpowered hardware. Honestly I get it.

The thing is, it's not about how many of Breath of the Wild's problems it "fixed". It's about how many new problems it created. And holy hell there are a lot of them.

For starters, as impressive as it is that it runs as glitch-free as it does on the Switch, this game has lots of performance hiccups its predecessor simply didn't. Something as basic as switching a weapon, instant in BotW, now has a little delay every time. If you're diving deep, the game will often freeze for loading. There's a severe input delay throughout, and occasionally even the controls get unresponsive during more intensive sections, which really hurts combat when you need precise timing for dodging or parrying. Sometimes you can't even pick up things off the ground too quickly because the game can't keep up. Look, none of it is game-breaking or anything, but these little things are nuisances from the first moments of the game up until the final boss, and it boggles my mind that everyone treats this like it runs perfectly. It doesn't. Breath of the Wild ran better.

Anyways... You know in BotW when you walk out of the Shrine of Resurrection and see the beautiful world in front of you, waiting to be explored? That incredible feeling of wonder and adventure that you get, and how it continues throughout the whole game? Well in Tears of the Kingdom you also get that, for maybe the first couple hours, and then it's gone. Totally gone. The world you're exploring is the same world, but now you can just hop on a tower and fly wherever you want. So instead of marking a place on your map and then having to figure out how to get there, you mark a place on your map and fly to it without any difficulty. The game is telling you that its world doesn't matter. Traversal is trivial, so Hyrule is trivial too. It's no longer a place you believe in, it's just a videogame map for you to play around in.

Breath of the Wild felt like an adventure. Tears of the Kingdom feels like a sandbox.

...Or well, it feels like a sandbox for a little while, then it all starts to quickly feel like busywork. That's because the game tries to build on the "player innovation" factor of its predecessor by giving the player way more tools to get creative with - too many tools, that is. You don't feel creative when the solution to every puzzle is laid down right next to it as a bunch of pre-designed pieces you just need to stitch together for the 100th time. The whole idea of the Zonai devices is inherently flawed because it auto-solves problems the players would have to otherwise think about, so in trying to make Zelda as creative as possible, the developers made it an anti-creative game. Of course, there are fun puzzles even when you understand most of the game's mechanics, but they are few and far between - most of them are the kind of puzzle you know the solution to in a matter of seconds, but then it takes a matter of minutes to execute that solution, thus it feels like busywork.

All that said, I wanna get into the meat of my problem with Tears of the Kingdom: the tears of the kingdom.

For as much as I can see why people love this game so much, I cannot see how its story has been seen as an improvement. I mean, this isn't a Zelda story, this is Dragon Ball Z. Then again, somehow people like Dragon Ball Z.

"Was that the sword that seals the darkness? A blade that shatters so easily against my power cannot save you from me."
"The sword will continue to gain strength if bathed in sacred power. The stronger that power, the more powerful the sword becomes."
"After all, you possess more than power over time. You have a sacred power that can dispel evil."

Each of these lines were said by different characters within half a minute. You can see the problem, right? They don't talk like people, they only talk in exposition. Even the voice acting is stiff and monotonous throughout (I'm sure the actors are better than this if given a decent script). Every character is replaceable because no one has a personality, no one talks or acts in a way that stands out, no one has any life outside of the main conflict and I have no reason to care. These aren't characters. They're just designs.

Gone are the days when Saria would become a sage because she was always there for you. When Groose played a crucial role in saving the world because he learned to be humble. In Tears of the Kingdom, you're only important if you have a special power you were born with. And to be fair, this was already a problem in Breath of the Wild, but at least that game cared enough to give its characters some semblance of personality. We all joke about the power of friendship, but I'll take that any day over this power of lineage bullshit.

The Legend of Zelda was always defined by its three main characters who each represented a different quality: Link, courage; Zelda, wisdom; Ganon, power. Apparently the writers thought the first two were boring so now the story is about power, evil power, sacred power, the power of the sword, power of light, power over time, eternal power, and power over all the people who eat this shit up. And maybe it's true that most people don't really come to a Zelda game for its story, but the franchise has had good narratives in the past and this is a total embarassment on every level.

Whew.

That's Tears of the Kingdom. It's a massive downgrade from Breath of the Wild on nearly every level. The gameplay tries to double down on the inventiveness of its predecessor, but fails at generating actual creativity. The dungeons which were already a weak point are even worse now, except for the boss battles. The soundtrack is nowhere near as good, I can only remember a single new track. The story is an absolute joke. The sense of adventure is completely gone. Most characters do not evolve in any significant way and neither does the worldbuilding. Instead of expanding on the mythos of the previous game, we instead get a completely redundant story that barely acknowledges its predecessor as it retraces its every step. This is everything a sequel shouldn't be: bigger, flashier, dumber. And so very "been there, done that". It adds almost nothing of value. It doesn't stand out in any way. It's just more. It's not art. It's content.

And to put the final nail in the coffin, Kass is nowhere to be found and isn't even acknowledged. Like, who the hell decides to get rid of their best character when making a sequel? Then again he's probably better off staying well clear of this mess, so it's probably a good thing.


I know the rating is unfitting with my gigantic rant here, but this is still built on Breath of the Wild at the end of the day, so it's fun by nature. It is a rather good game, and definitely had its great moments, but outside of those moments it mostly felt like padding. I wanted to be done with it 50 hours before I actually was. I'm glad I finally am. And it makes me really worried for the future of the Zelda series.