About a month ago, I started playing “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” and it quickly took over my life, even more so than its predecessor, “Breath of the Wild.”
“Tears of the Kingdom” has several noticeable improvements from the previous game, despite having an almost identical world — at least on the surface (literally). In addition to the surface world, you can explore sky islands and the Depths — an underworld almost as big as the surface accessible by canyons that have popped up around Hyrule.
Also separating it is the updated runes that silent protagonist Link has access to. There’s Ultrahand, which allows you to fuse objects together, Fuse, which allows you to fuse items to your shield or weapon, Recall, which allows you to reverse an object’s path in time, Ascend, which allows you to climb vertically through platforms and Autobuild, which lets you construct previous builds instantly.
These are absolute gamechangers and make you almost forget about mechanics that didn’t carry over from “Breath of the Wild,” like Cryonis and Revali’s Gale. Different items will create different effects to your weapons and shields when fused. Icy meat, for example, will allow you to shield surf more smoothly, while fusing a Keese eye to an arrow will give it a homing ability. Most other items will increase the attack power of your weapons to various degrees. Several items, like sapphires, rubies and topaz, will give elemental properties to what they’re fused to (you can make a fire, ice and electricity rods respectively with each of those items).
Then there’s the Zonai devices, which are the building blocks of the game’s builds. You can build land vehicles with things like wheels, steering sticks and stabilizers, planes with Zonaite wings and fans — you can even make a tank or a mech suit, which many fans have. The sky’s the limit, in addition to your Zonai battery, which you have to painstakingly upgrade if you want to use your builds for more than a few seconds.
I’m halfway through the main quest and am unsure when I’ll pick it up again. There is just so much to do in this game that it’s almost a lifestyle, like other popular open-world games, like “Skyrim.” Needless to say, there’s plenty to do once the main quest is done — its Zonai devices will keep people playing for years on end alone. The only limit to this game is your imagination.
“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” | Return to Nintendo: Column from the Editor
The following is the third entry in “Return to Nintendo”, a series of columns in which I return to Nintendo consoles via the Switch after a 5-year hiatus. I love “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” as I’ve put countless hours into the game.…
This has led to many people playing games not the way the developers have intended — you’ll find many videos lamenting on duplication glitches that were unceremoniously patched out by Nintendo staff, as well as countless examples of people cheesing Shrines (like in “Breath of the Wild,” you have to complete these to upgrade your health and stamina meter) and bosses. To those points, that’s exactly what Nintendo ordered when they made the game like this — to allow players to play the way they want to and to subsequently break the game in the same way they broke “Breath of the Wild” via glitches like Wind Bombing.
This will be an incredibly hard game to follow up and might be the greatest open world game of all time. With everything previously listed, as well as the increased variety in Shrines and quests in general, I don’t see how this game can be improved in a notable manner outside of some small tweaks. It took what was already a really good formula in “Breath of the Wild” — a mix of fun boss battles, puzzles and enemy camps to defeat — and improved it.
With that being said, its story — a usual strong point for this franchise — does suffer in a similar way to “Breath of the Wild.” But I don’t think it can be improved without returning to a linear form of gameplay. Like “Breath of the Wild” it’s shattered into many cutscenes that the player must collect and it’s very likely that you’ll gather them out of order. In both this game and “Breath of the Wild,” the story takes a backseat to gameplay by virtue of the type of games they are (open world).
After “Tears of the Kingdom,” I hope Zelda returns to linear gameplay. It’s been too long since we had a linear entry on a home console (“Skyward Sword”) and I don’t think there’s any point in trying to outdo this game. I think “Tears of the Kingdom” found a sweet spot; a game with more mechanics would be a mess in a bad way.
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