An astounding accomplishment of game development. Games with the same amount of content or level of polish are not unheard of, but to achieve such a standard in both is truly incredible, especially given the hardware it is running on.
One standout improvement over Breath of the Wild is the main story campaign. Given the open structure, a less evolved story was forgiven, but with the addition of several dungeons and key scripted events, Tears of the Kingdom tells a concise yet elaborated story with emotion payoff.
Exploration is the most important part of the new Zelda formula, and the sky islands open up a whole new dimension of exploration. The seamless transition between sky and ground is both a technical marvel and an ingenious game design. The abyss, on the other hand, suffers from monotone presentation and overall lack of variety, and is the weakest part of the game. In terms of interactivity, the new abilities are mostly upgrade over the old ones with the addition of crafting. While crafting system does open up a new venue of creativity, the interface is cumbersome, and the end products are more novelty rather than something that offers significant gameplay advantage (in terms of the time and resource needed to craft them, and their usability), in other words, they are great for TikTok content creators, but not so much for someone just trying to play the game.
There is one design contradiction in the game. TotK brands itself as a direct sequel, and as such, it gets away with the huge amount of reused assets and lack of new assets (music, map, enemy variety, etc). From the narrative standpoint, however, the game has almost no ties to BotW. Most NPCs don't recognize Link, and his actions in BotW seem to have zero impact in the world of Totk. It is, at the same time, too familiar yet too distant, with very few surprises.
One standout improvement over Breath of the Wild is the main story campaign. Given the open structure, a less evolved story was forgiven, but with the addition of several dungeons and key scripted events, Tears of the Kingdom tells a concise yet elaborated story with emotion payoff.
Exploration is the most important part of the new Zelda formula, and the sky islands open up a whole new dimension of exploration. The seamless transition between sky and ground is both a technical marvel and an ingenious game design. The abyss, on the other hand, suffers from monotone presentation and overall lack of variety, and is the weakest part of the game. In terms of interactivity, the new abilities are mostly upgrade over the old ones with the addition of crafting. While crafting system does open up a new venue of creativity, the interface is cumbersome, and the end products are more novelty rather than something that offers significant gameplay advantage (in terms of the time and resource needed to craft them, and their usability), in other words, they are great for TikTok content creators, but not so much for someone just trying to play the game.
There is one design contradiction in the game. TotK brands itself as a direct sequel, and as such, it gets away with the huge amount of reused assets and lack of new assets (music, map, enemy variety, etc). From the narrative standpoint, however, the game has almost no ties to BotW. Most NPCs don't recognize Link, and his actions in BotW seem to have zero impact in the world of Totk. It is, at the same time, too familiar yet too distant, with very few surprises.