It feels a little cliché to finish playing a game for the first time and then proudly declare it as one of the greatest games ever made, but... here we are! I truly do feel that way about Tears of the Kingdom. I can’t recall any game that’s hooked me in quite the same way. I’m typically not somebody who likes to play games for much longer than an hour or an hour and a half at a time, yet there were times playing the game where I’d finally switch off my recording to see that I’d been playing for up to three hours straight, getting distracted by random thing on the horizon after random thing on the horizon!
As a sequel, the name of the game here is depth. Tears of the Kingdom takes the core concepts of Breath of the Wild and then suffuses a greater level of depth than could have possibly been imagined back in 2017 into every single one. That goes both as physical depth and mechanical depth. TotK uses BotW’s overworld as a foundation, and then expands high into the skies and deep underground. The size of the world has increased dramatically as a result, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sense of awe of diving into my first chasm, getting hit by that initial horn blare as I fell, and then finally landing in the Depths: a sprawling, unfamiliar landscape that stretched out underneath the entirety of Hyrule, which more importantly, I had no idea existed until I was standing in the middle of it. The joy of discovery is here in full force is TotK, and part of the reason I’m glad I managed to avoid spoilers as well as I did is so that moments like this would hit harder.
While the base overworld may be reused, years have passed since Breath of the Wild, both in-universe and in real life. Discovery comes from seeing how Hyrule has changed since then, and alongside the map being more fleshed out through a new series of caves and wells, and a range of subtle to sweeping alterations to a variety of areas, Tears of the Kingdom paints a vivid picture of a kingdom that’s healing. The Calamity is over, and Hyrule is finally able to rebuild. The Upheaval may have thrown everyone into strange times, but it’s recent and not as immediately apocalyptic (though it certainly will be apocalyptic if you don’t stop it! There’s a greater sense of urgency to fighting Ganondorf than there was for Ganon, since the story is now about preventing a potential apocalypse on the horizon rather than the cause of one in the distant past). At every turn, Hyrule feels much more lively this time around. The game loses the peaceful stillness of Breath of the Wild, but the atmosphere it puts in its place is by no means a step down (...though I did start to feel a little crowded by companions during my postgame explorations). This incarnation of Hyrule has been my favorite ever since I first played Breath of the Wild through the tail end of 2017 into 2018, and it’s satisfying to see this same world finally healing from tragedy, slowly but surely.
I think part of what allows Tears of the Kingdom to turn its reused map into a strength rather than a setback is just how long it’s been since Breath of the Wild, too. Sure, if you play the games back to back, it’ll certainly be an issue, but if you last played BotW years ago, you’ll likely find yourself in the sweet spot of remembering the world well enough to be excited seeing how it’s changed, but with a fuzzy enough memory to still be surprised by some of the landmarks you stumble upon (for example, I completely forgot where Zora’s Domain was until I ran into it, which served as a pretty magical moment when I realized... same goes for the Great Plateau a bit earlier in my playthrough). Even if I was retreading old ground in the literal sense much of the time with Tears of the Kingdom, it never felt like it. Not to mention all the new secrets to find (felt most strongly in all the hidden armor pieces throughout the world), altered locations for Shrines and Great Fairies, and new enemies scattered about. There was some magical sense of wonder at the very start of the game as I bumped into a Bubbulfrog and then a Like Like back to back and found myself asking, “What in the world is that? And what’s that?” I was quickly discovering more new things than I’d expected.
Similarly, I was surprised at some of the new things I was collecting, too. Tears of the Kingdom has a few more counters that’ll pop out throughout your playthrough than Breath of the Wild, whether that be for Bubbul Gems or for Pony Points, and it lends the experience a little bit more of a game-y feel. Early in my playthrough, I opened a chest in the sky to be greeted with a “Sage’s Will”, and it dawned on me in that moment that “huh. I’m even collecting things at this point that I have absolutely no idea what they do”. Soon after, I opened another chest to find an Old Map that marked a little X in the Depths, and thought to myself, “Yeah, alright, okay, this game has literal treasure maps. Sure, I guess!” There exists an almost overwhelming amount of things to find.
Side quests are much more fleshed out this time around, as well. In fact, there’s even a separate tab in the Adventure Log separating normal side quests from the meatier “Side Adventures”. This plays a lot into TotK’s feeling of liveliness compared to BotW, and generally makes side content feel much more rewarding to complete. There’s goofier stuff like chasing down Master Kohga, more touching quests like preparing Mattison to leave home, and quests that are just plain satisfying to complete, like restoring Lurelin Village, all of which contribute towards creating a Hyrule that feels more lived in.
Mechanical depth is made apparent through Link’s new arsenal of abilities, all of which end up having greater utility and tie into the game as a whole better than Breath of the Wild’s more situational runes. Ultrahand and Fuse are of course the stars of the show here. Thanks to these two abilities alone, Tears of the Kingdom consistently places a greater emphasis on creativity and experimentation than any other adventure game I’ve played (Ultrahand is obvious in this regard, but the sheer amount of effects you can get from Fuse combinations surprised me! It’s like the game really wants you to just mess around with different combinations and see what happens. Because of this, every single material in the game is given more depth and more purpose than they ever had in Breath of the Wild. Plus, the ability to augment your weapons with monster parts creates a nice system of progression where you’re less likely to break weapons and have to replace them with much weaker ones, since in using your weapons to kill monsters, you’re creating a new baseline weapon strength defined by your stash of horns (...just held back a bit by how unnecessarily clunky fusing a material can be, either having to drop it on the floor first to fuse with a weapon or shield (which really sucks if you’re in the middle of combat!), or having to scroll through a massive “quick” select menu to fuse to an arrow. It’s ultimately a nitpick, but with how often you find yourself fusing things, that little bit of clunkiness builds up over time. Just wish you could at least map a few materials to the face buttons or something when you pull up the quick select menu so firing fused arrows could be snappier. Okay, massive parenthetical over)). It really does allow you to create your own solutions to most problems, and all throughout the game it feels like you’re learning how to use them more effectively. Your first playthrough is made fun as the limitlessness of possibilities slowly dawns on you more and more, and I imagine a second playthrough is made fun as you have the knowledge at that point to really test the game’s limits from the get-go.
Strangely, this “first playthrough vs. second playthrough” thing I feel applies to narrative progression as well. As soon as you finished the tutorial, Breath of the Wild made it very clear that Ganon was in Hyrule Castle, and the game ends when you fight him there. You’re intended to tackle the Divine Beasts before heading there both to see more of what the game offers before you beat it and so that you get more prepared for the fight in the process, but you can ultimately set off for the castle whenever you feel ready. Tears of the Kingdom isn’t quite as forthcoming about the game’s structure (I was surprised to finally finish the regional phenomena and head up to Hyrule Castle, only to find that that wasn’t the end of the game! And thank goodness for that, I mean then it’d really feel like a rehash of BotW).There’s a few twists and turns that keep you on your toes as to what exactly your main goal is at any certain point, which lends a bit more intrigue to a first playthrough. You’re never really told where the end of the game lies until you’ve completed the game’s other main objectives first, which left me wondering if the game’s main story wasn’t quite as open-ended as Breath of the Wild’s, but by the end I realized that that wasn’t the case. I could’ve very well stumbled upon the final boss halfway through my playthrough if it wasn’t for the fact that poor lighting conditions kept me from noticing a certain cave entrance! There’s something special about that. Tears of the Kingdom has a more apparent order of events you’re supposed to go through when it comes to the main story, but after learning what exactly that order is through a first playthrough, a second playthrough can be spent messing around with it. I’m of course still on my first playthrough, but whenever I end up playing the game again (which I’m certain I will), I know the number one thing I’m excited to see is how much I can mess around with that narrative order.
The narrative itself, however, I’m a little more conflicted on. As mentioned, there’s a lot more going on in the present this time around, but the game does retain Breath of the Wild’s memory system for learning about the past. And hey, I don’t think it’s a bad system. I like the idea of slowly getting more pieces of the puzzle that you start to put together in your mind, though I think it could’ve been executed a little better (some memories are a lot more insightful than others). The one big issue I have with it, though, is that the game has one big plot twist, and it’s a good twist, but the problem is that the game can never know when you’ve pieced it together, so it just spends 99% of its runtime assuming you haven’t yet. It’s frustrating for every NPC to act puzzled by this one mystery that you’ve already solved, but you have no way to communicate to them or to the game that you understand more than they do. With the order that I did things in, I figured out the twist earlier than I think the game really wanted me to (before finding all the memories and before finishing all the regional phenomena), so... it really sucked to have everybody talking about Zelda and expecting me to fall for the impostor too and stuff with no way for me to communicate that “guys. I found her. I literally just pulled a sword out of her skull”. It can be frustrating when you’re a step ahead of the game, which is perfectly likely to happen given that Tears of the Kingdom isn’t even walking forward for fear of getting ahead of you and spoiling its own big twist. It makes sense as to why the issue exists, but I just can’t help but wish there was some flag after you’d finished all the memories at least that let the game know for sure you’d figured it out, so it could stop pretending like you hadn’t.
Shrines were also something that sort of bugged me about the game. Compared to Breath of Wild, they’re more likely to teach you something that’s actually applicable to the overworld, but they become trivial if you’ve already figured out what they’re trying to teach you on your own. There’s still some gimmicky ones here and there (such as one Shrine that deals with a kind of floating object that appears nowhere else in the game! Also plenty that serve explicitly as combat tutorials, which make for a much more insulting way of teaching you simple concepts you likely already know from BotW (because the game otherwise seems to assume you’ve played BotW), where things were explained much less intrusively with little pop-ups on the side of the screen), and either way, the challenges still vary in how interesting they are. It wasn’t long before I started to feel impatient with them. There’s 32 more Shrines than the last game for a total of 152, and doing many of them close together starts to feel grating. As my sister put it, “Shrines are yawn.” I felt obligated to finish each one I found for the sake of increasing my stamina and hearts (along with simply for the sake of completion), but it always felt like they dragged me away from my exploration of the world for a moment, something I would frankly much rather be doing.
Another criticism lingering in my mind as I played had to do with connectivity between the overworld and the Depths. The three layers of the map are generally handled well, with incentives to explore each: the overworld is where most of your main objectives are and honestly where the bulk of the world naturally lies, the sky gives you the perfect vantage point to glide across the world (in my playthrough, I quickly shot across the sky from Central Hyrule to the southeast without having to trek across much of the ground, and that was honestly a blast!), and the Depths hold a surplus of Zonaite and Crystallized Charges that are necessary to more effectively build vehicles, tying back around to how you traverse everywhere else. While the sky and overworld connect freely and you can reach either one simply by heading up/down at any point, the Depths can only be accessed by diving into chasms scattered across the world. That’s not a problem at all; in fact, it’s a choice that works well. The issue is that once you dive into the Depths, the only way out will usually be to teleport to some overworld Shrine you’ve previously visited. It’s easy enough to enter the Depths, but exiting is a much more difficult task. There are a few points scattered around where you can Ascend out, but I didn’t encounter one until tens of hours into the game, so needless to say, they aren’t particularly plentiful. I could understand the idea of not wanting the player to use the Depths to run underneath every challenge the overworld would throw at them, but I don’t think adding a few more points of connection would necessarily make that an issue, since the developers could still, y’know... choose where those points are? And besides, there’s clearly no issue with the player using the sky to fly over their problems in the overworld, and as previously mentioned, I had a blast making my way to the beach barely setting foot on the ground. It just feels like a missed opportunity, and results in any exploration in the Depths feeling like a side excursion rather than anything that connects to your exploration of the overworld. Like, I’ll explore the Depths a bit, then ultimately teleport back out right outside the chasm I jumped in, then continue with my exploration of the overworld like everything I did in the Depths was of no consequence. The Depths can never spit you out somewhere new. Exploration down there never really leads you anywhere as a result.
It doesn’t help that the Depths in general are lacking in variety. Once you get over the initial awe of it, you’ll come to realize that everywhere looks the same in the Depths, and that abandoned mines are more or less the only set pieces you’ll come across. Whereas the sky is made up of a scattering of smaller islands (which themselves suffer a bit from the copy and pasting of certain structures), the Depths provide just as much landmass as the entirety of the overworld, but with lower density of interesting things to find. As such, the size of the Depths becomes its biggest weakness rather than a strength... it just feels a little empty. There’s not even any Koroks to find or anything (though given that the game already has a thousand scattered across the overworld and sky... maybe that’s for the best)!
Dungeons make their grand return, and end up feeling much more satisfying to discover and traverse than the Divine Beasts. There’s more variety in the aesthetics of the dungeons, how exactly you get to them, and bosses you fight at the end, making for an overall more interesting set. They’re still very different from traditional Zelda dungeons, which is to be expected, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. The new direction for them still needs some time to be fleshed out, though... I couldn’t help but feel like a lot of the dungeons were just a disconnected series of puzzles, with none of the solutions I came up with (either intended solutions or cheesed ones) ever feeling all too satisfying. I found myself missing the traditional linear Zelda dungeons a little. They’re certainly a step in the right direction, though, and I appreciate how they’re presented. It’s just that the series has done much better design-wise before.
Each dungeon is preceded by a little questline revolving around the region you’re checking out and a companion representing the people living there, and the game does a fantastic job of really making it feel like the people of each area are in danger. Breath of the Wild’s Divine Beasts were just hanging out, and the people of each area weren’t ultimately under much threat (after all, they managed to chill with the Divine Beast hanging out in their vicinity for at least 100 years), whereas Tears of the Kingdom places each area under a unique and immediate danger. BotW created curiosity in checking out each area simply because you were unfamiliar with them, while TotK creates curiosity as you want to see what problem everybody’s dealing with (and with how pressing each one is, you feel more motivated to fix them!). It’s also rewarding to reconnect with your old besties from the first game (...except Yunobo!!), all of whom get more time in the spotlight here (and more importantly, ALL MY BABIES HAVE GROWN UP!). There’s so much more going on with each region you investigate this time.
My one frustration with this structure, however, is that it also means the game won’t let you enter any of the temples until you complete the region’s storyline up to the point you’re “supposed” to enter the temples. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled on the Fire Temple by complete accident! And then my face fell when I tried to activate the temple’s gateway, and a big red X showed up with no more explanation. There are a few moments where the game can stop you in your tracks if you try to investigate something you’re not supposed to yet (I recall an NPC who had something for an ability I didn’t have yet withholding it from me earlier in the game as well... I got said ability pretty soon after and came back, but it was still jarring for the game to explicitly tell me to “come back later” when that was something Breath of the Wild had never done). During the Zora storyline, I remember gazing upwards to see the sky islands that led to the Water Temple and thinking, “Huh. I could probably make some kind of flying machine to get up there instead of doing all this questline stuff, couldn’t I?” I’m almost glad I didn’t try, though, as the game no doubt would’ve told me no and left me disappointed. In a game all about creativity and experimentation, having strictly one way to get to each temple feels, y’know... a little against the point.
The game’s climax is another thing I’m conflicted on (spoilers ahead, obviously!). The game talks about the “Demon King” a lot (you watch essentially the exact same cutscene about him at the end of every dungeon!), so the final fight is certainly built up well throughout the game. But Ganondorf just makes for a weird villain. First of all, he’s sort of just a guy. Like, he has whatever goofy Demon King magic, but you go to finally fight him, and it becomes apparent very quickly that you’re just fighting some dude. Not even a silly mummy or anything, since he rehydrates right before you fight him (wonder why he didn’t do that earlier...). Calamity Ganon felt like some powerful ancient evil, some almost intangible cosmic force you don’t really understand (and that you never really see the true form of until you fight it). Ganondorf being some guy who walks and talks and all makes it feel weird for him to want to take over the world, since you’d expect him to have a motive, but he doesn’t really. Like, I interpreted Calamity Ganon as killing everything because it was some ancient evil that operated on instinct rather than rational thought, and as, y’know, the great ancient evil or whatever, its sole instinct was “kill everything”. Ganondorf being a person means that he should operate more on rational thought or at least emotional thought, yet the game never presents any reason whatsoever as to why he wants to destroy Hyrule. He’s evil just... because. Maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of this one point than I should (“oh no, the evil guy in my video game about defeating the evil guy is evil!!”), but I think it contributes to Ganondorf feeling like a weak villain.
The other thing is that you don’t really interact with him much throughout the game. You see him plenty throughout the memories, but all that’s in the past. In the present, he feels to be almost lacking in presence. Like, sure, he’s the cause of everything wrong happening in each region throughout Hyrule, but those are all his little minions, y’know? You only interact with him directly in the very opening of the game, and then one other time when he FaceTimes you at Hyrule Castle. He spends the vast majority of the game just sort of chilling out in his little hole underneath the castle, not really doing anything. He doesn’t end up getting much screen time outside of the memories. Having a less visible villain is something plenty of games do, but I just feel that it’s hard to make a villain memorable if there’s barely any moments where you see them to remember!
Ganondorf doesn’t manage to feel particularly intimidating during his final fight, as again, he’s just some guy walking towards you. I appreciate the duel-like atmosphere of it, but nothing much about the fight really kept me on my toes. Most of his attacks I recognized from Phantom Ganon, so I already knew how to deal with them, and his new attacks were largely underwhelming. I got a laugh out of his health bar in the second phase, though, and at least him being able to flurry rush too was a neat little surprise.
Seemed like the climax was shaping up to be just a little disappointing, but that’s where the third phase kicks in. There’s that moment where he tears out his secret stone and it suddenly clicks and you know exactly what he’s about to do. In that moment, everything the story’s been building to, and most importantly, its one big twist, are paid off in spectacular fashion. As with Dark Beast Ganon before it, TotK’s final moments are more spectacle than substance, but dang is it spectacular, with the music really selling that feeling. Except... the fight isn’t quite TotK’s final moments; there’s a little bit more after you finish it. The music again sells this moment, and there’s something poetic about the game opening with you diving, reaching out your hand, and failing to catch Zelda, only to end with you diving once again (this time fully in control of Link), but this time finally managing to reach out and grab her hand (even landing in the same pool of water where you first dived down to Hyrule from the sky). You can get frustrated all you want about how “argh, Zelda’s restoration in the end completely devalues her initial sacrifice!” or whatever, but Nintendo seems to care more about giving a happy ending than anything, and I suspected as much from the start. That final line of “Oh, Link... I’m home!” contains so much joy... The besties need to fling into each other’s arms and laugh and cry. It makes for such a satisfying conclusion that even if the Ganondorf fight might’ve left a little to be desired, I think I still look back on the climax fondly.
Tears of the Kingdom is the kind of game that defines a generation. It takes all of Breath of the Wild’s core concepts and then expands them to create something unlike any game before it. The game is beautiful not in the quiet, serene way that its predecessor was, but in an entirely new way that revolves around a kingdom moving forward from tragedy, absolutely bursting with life that the player is free to explore truly in any way they desire. Tears of the Kingdom is not a flawless game, but the sheer amount of wholesome joy and wonder it imparts vastly outweigh the flaws it has. It serves as a rare case of an incredibly ambitious game that manages to nail almost every single one of its ideas. The wait was more than worth it; I’m eager to see wherever the Zelda series goes from here.