It’s no exaggeration to suggest that one of the most highly anticipated video game releases of the last 6 years is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A direct follow-up to 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game that not only flipped Zelda series conventions on its head but also open-world game design philosophies that have since permeated into several other games and franchises. Breath of the Wild has its share of criticisms but is recognized by critics and players alike as being one of the greatest video games of modern times. So how does Nintendo follow up a near-masterpiece? The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an ambitious sequel that builds and improves on Breath of the Wild, while stumbling in a few key areas that hold it back from perfection.
Warning, after a playtime of 120 hours, this review will delve into most aspects of Tears of the Kingdom. I won’t be going into story-specific details or plot outside of the most basic setup, however, I will be discussing areas of gameplay that might be considered spoilers to some players. If you have played the game or don’t care about these types of spoilers, read on! If not, read at your own risk.
In a somewhat rare occurrence for the franchise over its 37-year life, Tears of the Kingdom is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild. Zelda games have been released in the past containing elements of a sequel, such as reusing game assets from Ocarina of Time in Majora’s Mask, or A Link Between Worlds being set in the same Hyrule as A Link to the Past. Tears of the Kingdom follows the same Link and Princess Zelda from Breath of the Wild, as well as taking place in the same Hyrule, albeit altered and expanded.
Tears of the Kingdom takes place a few years after the end of Breath of the Wild, where the rebuilding of Hyrule Kingdom after the Calamity has begun. While investigating a mysterious substance spreading across the land referred to as “Gloom”, Zelda and Link discover an ancient ruin of the lost civilization known as the “Zonai”, and a mummified corpse deep beneath Hyrule Castle. The corpse returns from death, erupting into a frenzy of malice that not only manages to harm our hero LInk and damage the legendary Master Sword but also begins the Upheaval, as Hyrule Castle is lifted into the air and chunks of the sky begin to fall to Earth. As if that wasn’t enough, Princess Zelda disappears in the chaos. These are the events that set you off on this new journey.
In broad terms, the story in Tears of the Kingdom is the first notable improvement over Breath of the Wild. While the story in the predecessor wasn’t altogether bad, it was a pretty passive story about discovering events that transpired 100 years in the past. While there is an element of this style of storytelling still present in Tears of the Kingdom, on the whole, the story is much more active for the characters involved. There are more intriguing mysteries and more surprising revelations that are discovered as the story unfolds than what was present in Breath of the Wild. The voice performances are particularly commendable and feel like a dramatic step up in quality. These performances lend themselves well to fantastic character moments that will please fans new and old alike. The story overall feels more engaging and more emotionally satisfying than Breath of the Wild.
Related to the story, one of the games major stumbles is in the delivery of said story. The opening of the game, as well as the ending, are fantastic. They are paced well with interactive gameplay segments and cutscenes, and there’s great use of music contributing to a sense of suspense, tension, mystery, and excitement. It’s the events in between where the game’s open-ended structure intervenes and negatively impacts the storytelling.
Much like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom allows you to tackle any major area or quest in the order of your choosing. From a game design perspective, it gives the player agency over their own journey, lending itself to that “water cooler” experience where players can have drastically different experiences playing the same game. While the open structure is particularly freeing when it comes to gameplay, in regards to storytelling it becomes remarkably restrictive. Characters and scenarios Link interacts with during the main quest are written and play out very similar to one another, as a result of the developers being unsure which region a player will tackle first. Each of the 4 major regions and questlines need to be written and performed as though they are the first one in a sequence, which ends up making each feel cookie cutter, despite the regions and gameplay of these sequences differing quite significantly. There’s even a specific section of dialogue that each of the side characters goes through that feels like it’s written the exact same for each character. Certain story revelations that you as a player have deduced are not reflected or addressed by the other characters, even though it would make story sense for them to be informed of what’s happening. Not to mention that certain story threads you would expect to be carried over from Breath of the Wild and discussed or expanded upon are mysteriously absent from Tears of the Kingdom which feels like an odd oversight more than an intentional choice.
I mentioned above how there is an element of the story that is experienced passively similar to Breath of the Wild, more specifically that game’s “memories”. Memories in Breath of the Wild were cutscenes that would trigger at specific locations in Hyrule that would illuminate part of the events that occurred 100 years in the past. There is a similar sequence of triggering cutscenes at specific locations in Tears of the Kingdom. Again, on paper it seems like an interesting idea, allowing the player to unravel the story in their own way. But this completely undermines the directed and controlled pacing and build-up that was established at the beginning that was executed so well. On top of that, the order of the story scenes are specific to the actual locations in the world. This ended up being a problem during my playthrough that affected my view on the story.
After you come across the first cutscene in the sequence you get a quest that takes you to a different location to learn more. Due to the open-ended design of the game, I decided I would continue that later and went on my way, getting distracted by every little thing in the distance. Eventually, as I was descending from a lookout tower, I was paragliding near another one of these specified areas and thought “I wonder if they let you find these out of order?”. Turns out they do let you find them out of order, and the one I happened to be flying by at that point was the final scene in the sequence. It was like turning to the last chapter of a book after having only read the first, there were characters I wasn’t introduced to yet, events being shown that had no build-up at all, and story elements being discussed I had no context for. It felt like the game itself spoiled its own story. Had I gone to the location of the quest, it would have revealed a specific order these locations were to be visited in, but wouldn’t it have made more sense to allow a player to discover the locations in any order but the cutscenes to play out in a specific sequence? Or at least more clearly communicate that this quest should be completed before proceeding.
While the actual plot of the story is an improvement accentuated by awesome moments, the delivery method needs to be iterated on further and would benefit from having a more directed hand steering the ship rather than leaving it up to players to stumble through it. This may seem like a lot of criticism over story, but I think it is fair due to seemingly how much importance Nintendo was placing on the story with how secretive they have been regarding story elements prior to the game’s release.
Presentation-wise, Tears of the Kingdom is good generally speaking. Visually, the art style is relatively unchanged from Breath of the Wild’s semi-cell-shaded look. The art direction that carried Breath of the Wild likewise does a lot of heavy lifting in Tears of the Kingdom. Islands decorated with unique architecture and golden trees dot the skies and look significantly different than what you will find on the surface. The same goes for the dark mushroom-filled depths, which we will discuss further in a bit. One noticeable improvement with the visuals comes in the form of draw distance, or how far into the distance you can see. When you are up in the air, you can practically see the entire map all at once. There is a drop-off in the visual details at farther distances, but the amount that remains loaded in and visible is pretty astonishing. Visually speaking, Tears of the Kingdom looks great, even when compared to other first-party Nintendo Switch games.
Unfortunately, as is not too uncommon with releases on the aging Switch hardware, there are some performance hiccups. When using abilities or when there’s a lot of chaos around you, there are noticeable framerate dips. For the most part this usually isn’t bad enough to hamper enjoyment of the game, but it’s definitely noticeable if you are the type to pay attention to the technical performance of games. Occasionally there is some weirdness that can occur with the game’s physics engine like enemies or objects flying in an unnatural way, but this is pretty infrequent. On a positive note, in my 120 hours of playtime I never once had a game crash, which considering what’s going on under the hood with this game, the fact that it runs as well as it does on Switch is impressive.
Audio wise a lot of the same sound effects are carried over from Breath of the Wild, which remain just as satisfying, from equipment clanking around on Link’s back to the sharp crack of a critical hit with an arrow. The music this time around has received significant improvements. A common criticism of Breath of the Wild was its primarily minimalist piano soundtrack. These tracks still exist in Tears of the Kingdom, but now there are several more interesting and varied tracks that utilize more instruments of a full ensemble. When playing Tears of the Kingdom, it feels like there is more music playing, in general, to match whatever you are doing at a given time. Dark echoey tones will play when exploring a cave that contrasts with light fluttering music as you dive from a sky island high in the air, even the town themes have received some fun remixes. The way they use the robotic-sounding voices to make connections to the Zonai is also interesting and blends in with existing music and sound effects in cool and surprising ways. However, what I want to specifically praise is the music in the temples. I’ll discuss the temples later, but the temple themes are fantastic. They start off relatively reserved, but as you progress deeper inside and complete objectives, the music evolves and becomes more layered. It becomes more exciting and at the same time more tense as you proceed towards the boss fight at the end of the temple. And the boss’ music as well is bombastic and exciting. While some of the music might not hit the highs of previous titles in the series, in general, there’s a great use of new and original tracks, remixes, and retooling of classic themes in Tears of the Kingdom that musically elevates the game above Breath of the Wild.
While the story, visuals, and audio are all important parts of a great Zelda game, gameplay is ultimately the most important. Tears of the Kingdom is built on the existing skeleton of systems introduced in Breath of the Wild with some pretty big additions. It’s a large and densely packed game with many things to see and do. You will embark on main story quests as well as numerous side quests, visit towns, talk to people from the various kingdoms throughout Hyrule, solve puzzles in shrines, collect rupees and treasures, discover, purchase, and upgrade weapons and armors, battle monsters of all shapes and sizes photograph and catalog various locations and items around the world, you can even build your own home and tend a garden. That’s on top of discovering new abilities, improving your total hearts and stamina, and much more. Progression in Tears of the Kingdom is measured in many ways that all feed back into the core gameplay loop in one way or another.
There are 3 major spheres of the gameplay loop to discuss; exploration, combat, and puzzle solving. But before tackling those, I need to discuss the new abilities Link receives, because these fundamentally work their way into every facet of the gameplay. Replacing the Sheikah slate abilities from Breath of the Wild are Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend, and Recall. Ultrahand allows Link to pick up objects in the world and stick them together to create contraptions and machines from a simple raft to a full-on laser blasting machine of war. Fuse can connect objects to Link’s weapons, shields, and arrows to create new and augment existing equipment for a staggering number of effects and combinations. Ascend gives Link the ability to phase upward through solid matter, as long as there is a suitable amount of space above him. And Recall reverses a single object through time for a short duration. All of these abilities have numerous impacts on the gameplay that would be too exhaustive to detail for a review, but I will touch on some as they become relevant. As was mentioned above these do replace the Sheikah abilities from Breath of the Wild, but most of the functionality of those abilities is carried forward through different means in Tears of the Kingdom, such as bomb flowers replacing the bomb ability, and ice arrows created by fuse being able to freeze water similar to Cryonis. As far as the new abilities themselves go, mechanically they feel more interesting than the abilities present in Breath of the Wild. The implications these abilities have on the gameplay from puzzle solving to level design are far-reaching. Players will undoubtedly find new quirks by using these mechanics for years to come. These abilities lead to experimentation and emergent gameplay moments that constantly create “ah ha” moments of discovery when something works well, or comedic pity when a plan goes up in smoke.
While the mechanics and the potential gameplay situations are more engaging in Tears of the Kingdom, actually interfacing with these mechanics has become more cumbersome. By interfacing, I mean the act of pressing the buttons on the controller to achieve the desired effect of the mechanics. While Ultrahand allows you to create machines that match your wildest imagination, the way the game determines where items snap together feels a bit clunky. Not only do you have to handle moving and rotating objects along two axis (while holding another button down), it’s at times hard to ascertain the exact depth of an object in the scene, which leads to accidentally making connections between objects where you don’t want them to. And to separate objects you have to grab the whole machine and wiggle the right stick to get the specific object you grabbed to break off. There is another ability you receive that enables an auto-building extension of Ultrahand, but it has its own controlling quirks that require menu navigation and even a resource cost if you don’t have the specific materials you need to build a given machine right in front of you. Fusing items to a melee weapon or shield are two simple button presses and works how you would imagine it would. Throwing an object from your inventory, however, takes multiple button presses. You start by preparing to throw whatever weapon you are currently holding with the right shoulder button, then hold Up on the D-pad to bring up the item window. Then using the right stick, you move horizontally in the menu to select an item, then release Up on the D-pad in order to ready the item to throw. This is useful when you need to throw Brightbloom seeds to light up dark areas (something you will be doing a lot of), but it never stops feeling overly complicated to execute. And this issue is further exacerbated by Nintendo’s refusal to allow players to comprehensively edit the controls of their games. Ultimately the frustration that arises due to this clunkiness doesn’t drastically affect the enjoyment of the game, but it feels like there could have been a better way to translate these mechanics to the controller.
With the new abilities established, let’s get into it, starting with exploration. Breath of the Wild was praised for how compelling its sense of curiosity-driven exploration was, and this has been carried over and expanded in Tears of the Kingdom. Many of the familiar landmarks of Hyrule have been altered due to the Upheaval, and now the explorable world includes a sea of sky islands, as well as numerous caves and a vast subterranean zone known as The Depths, the size of which rivals the overworld land. In the skies and on land, various landmarks stand out on the horizon that draw your attention and silently beckon you to come near. You will find yourself setting a personal goal, only to be completely distracted for hours following miscellaneous threads of curiosity. A trip to a shrine in the distance may be cut short by finding a tower that launches you into the air. You begin skydiving and land on a sky island that has a boss-type enemy on top. You get a little reckless in your fighting style and get knocked off the island and fall back to the surface. You check your surroundings once more and find the recognizable smoke signal of a horse stable nearby. Trotting over to it and striking up a conversation reveals a sidequest about going to talk to a mystical talking Cucco. And without even realizing it, 3 hours have gone by and you still never made it to that shrine you wanted to visit in the first place. It’s this organic desire to explore that made people fall in love with Breath of the Wild, and this exact sensation is preserved in Tears of the Kingdom.
Sky islands are the most fun addition in regard to exploration. Just their mere presence in the skies above stokes the desire to explore. They are visually distinct from any other location in the game, adorned with crumbling Zonai architecture and golden grass, accented by the lush green color of the Zonai technology. There are a number of things to find on the islands including shrines, treasure chests, and even skydiving challenges. But what’s probably the most fun about them isn’t what’s on them, it’s how to get to them. Sky islands come in many sizes from small enough to barely support Link, to large explorable areas. There’s vast amounts of open sky that separate islands in each of the regions, and some islands stretch high above the clouds. There are multiple ways to reach sky islands. You can be launched into the air from a tower on the surface, you can paraglide from one island to another if they are close enough, some sky islands have devices on them that can launch you, or you can make a variety of flying vehicles using pieces of Zonai technology (more on that later). The rewards for exploring these sky islands are usually worthwhile, but I had a blast trying to formulate plans on how I was going to navigate to each of the islands, would pump my fist when I was successful, and usually laugh if I failed in spectacular fashion.
I also want to praise the skydiving itself. In 120 hours, it never got boring to watch. The rush that’s felt as you dive head first towards the ground and pop the paraglider at the last possible moment is exhilarating. It’s made even more remarkable due to the draw distance I mentioned earlier and being able to see the entire world beneath you. Skydiving challenges are fun minigames in themselves that reward a wingsuit that increases your mobility in the air. You are even able to pull out your bow while skydiving, triggering a slow-motion effect to aid with aerial combat which feels just as satisfying to pull off as it ever has. It’s all intuitive to control and never becomes stale. It feels like this was what the true vision was behind the skydiving in The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, but that the technology couldn’t fully realize on the Nintendo Wii.
The other big area of exploration to discuss is The Depths. A massive open cave system underneath the surface of Hyrule, The Depths are a dark and dangerous place, at least early on. When I say dark, it’s essentially pitch black. You enter The Depths by jumping down these massive holes called chasms into a black void. You can illuminate the area around you by throwing Brightbloom seeds (found in caves on the surface), or by finding light roots which are connected to shrines on the surface. If you find a light root, activating it illuminates a large area, which lets you actually take in a bit of your surroundings. Many areas and enemies in The Depths are covered in Gloom. If Link comes into contact with Gloom for an extended period of time, he will lose access to one of his hearts, meaning you won’t be able to heal like you normally would. If enemies hit Link when covered in Gloom, Link will automatically lose access to the amount of hearts of damage he receives. In order to regain the ability to heal, you either need to return to the surface or a light root to recharge, or cook a specific meal that restores Gloom hearts. So for those underprepared early on, The Depths can be pretty intimidating.
That intimidation eventually fades into mild annoyance. The Depths being completely dark is an interesting counter to the design of the overworld and the sky, and offers a nice visual contrast. Up above, there’s always something catching your eye, whereas down below, you might not know if there is a wall in front of you or a 200-foot drop. Early on this was a fun challenge to try and navigate but there comes a point when certain quests task you with reaching certain locations, and if you don’t have many light roots activated, you constantly run into seemingly never-ending walls and cliff faces, making exploration more of a hassle than a fun activity. Certain areas of The Depths are only accessible from specific chasms on the surface, so it’s hard to figure out if the place you are trying to get to has an entry point near where you are located, or if you have to return to the surface to find another entry point. This is made even more of a hassle when certain chasm entrances are hidden in the overworld and it isn’t obvious where to even find them. And again, the Gloom starts out as a worrying obstacle but once you have some hearts and some meals that reduce your Gloom hearts, the fear it once brought completely dissipates. Outside of a couple of instances, most of the enemies that are found in The Depths are the same that you will find on the surface, so it’s a bit of a missed opportunity to not include a bit more enemy variety down there, especially when the environment itself is so drastically foreign.
Like the surface and the sky islands, there are a number of activities and locations to discover in The Depths, but it seems a bit less varied than the surface and sky. There are several Zonai mines and forges down in The Depths you will need to track down if you want to improve Link’s energy meter, which governs how long you are able to operate Zonai technology. There are monster camps like ones found on the surface that have some materials to grab and monsters to slay. There’s colosseums where you are tasked with fighting waves of enemies and are usually rewarded with a special piece of loot at the end. There’s outposts belonging to a certain faction that offer a bit of visual variety and also have a unique reward tied to them. There are also statues down there that act as merchants in which you can buy unique armor and materials in exchange for poe souls, which you collect everywhere in The Depths. Unlike the surface, there aren’t any shrines to find or towns to happen across, and due to the size feeling pretty comparable to the size of the overworld, The Depths feel a little underutilized. There are areas where you can re-battle bosses which are fun because the boss fights themselves are fun, but they reuse the same bosses which kind of takes away from how special and unique they are when you encounter them at the end of a temple. So while The Depths brings a few interesting shakeups to the core gameplay and offers some good incentives to explore, it’s hampered by some frustration stemming from difficulty in navigation and a feeling that there’s more that could have been done.
One thing I felt while playing Tears of the Kingdom in this regard is a sometimes overwhelming amount of things and activities to do. I don’t want to knock a game for having a lot of content, that isn’t the intention, especially when Nintendo is asking $69.99 in the United States for this game. However, between there being over 150 shrines, more than 50 discoverable wells, hundreds of Korok seeds (again), numerous caves, towers, lore tablets… It can be a lot to take in. Towers are tied to unlocking the topography of a region on the map screen but are few enough that they don’t feel like overkill. However, there are more shrines in Tears of the Kingdom than in Breath of the Wild, which already had a large number to begin with. On the topic of shrines, they have a new aesthetic that’s different from Breath of the Wild’s shrines, however like that game, all the shrines use the same visual design, so while it’s a subjectively better-looking shrine, they fall into the same trap the Breath of the Wild shrines fell into, which is feeling too similar to one another. Even changing slightly to reflect the region they appear in would have gone a long way in making them feel more distinct. Things like the Korok seeds, Bubbulfrogs, and wells don’t yield much of a reward outside of money, crafting materials, incremental progress toward upgrades, or side quests.
What I am getting at with all of this is at times the amount of miscellaneous activities can start to feel a little bloated. Ubisoft open-world games are often criticized for the number of miscellaneous activities they have that ultimately don’t amount to much more than checklists. More so than what I felt when playing Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom feels like it starts getting closer to this style of “kitchen sink” approach to side activities, the only real difference being that the game doesn’t mark the location of these activities on the map with an abundance of icons. To be fair, there are other qualities to Zelda that elevate it much higher than comparing it directly to a typical Ubisoft open-world game, but I think similar to my qualms with the storytelling, side activities need someone steering the ship. There were plenty of areas that could have been trimmed down, it would have been better for the overall pacing of the game and it still would have achieved the grand scope and adventure they were going for. To put it more simply and reductively, I don’t think the experience was improved by adding 32 more shrines to the game.
Let’s switch gears to combat. Combat in Tears of the Kingdom, on the surface, is similar to combat in Breath of the Wild. You will find a number of bows, shields, and weapons of all kinds that will make up your basic tools. Swinging melee weapons or blocking with shields are done with a single button press. Combat with enemies typically requires good timing while performing light combo attacks as well as timing dodges around enemy attacks. What sets Tears of the Kingdom apart is the Fuse ability. With Fuse, you are able to stick many different items to your melee weapons and shields, as well as attach various items to arrows to change their effects. For instance, fusing a boulder to a sword will create a strong hammer, fusing a minecart to a shield can create a makeshift skateboard to use while shield surfing, and fusing a fire fruit to an arrow will create a fire arrow. Essentially any item that can be interacted with in the game world can be fused in this way. Some items will result in similar effects, but trying out multiple combinations to see what effects you can discover remains engaging throughout the entire game. Fusing usually extends that weapon or shield’s durability, allowing you to hold onto certain weapons for longer periods of time, which is a notable improvement to the maligned durability system in Breath of the Wild. While Link doesn’t really learn any new combat techniques, the Fuse ability really opens up your strategic decision-making during combat in a fun way that feels unique to Tears of the Kingdom.
As you progress in the game, Link will tackle certain areas with a companion. In addition to aiding in combat, this companion has a unique ability that Link is able to utilize, like a horizontal gust of wind to aid in traversal or an area-of-effect attack that summons a bolt of lightning. These abilities can, for the most part, be used during combat and are usually quite effective. They operate on a short cooldown so you are unable to continually spam these abilities, but they help in giving more tools to use to dispatch certain tougher enemies. Unfortunately, using these abilities does come with a bit of annoyance. In Breath of the Wild, Link gained a number of similar abilities from the Champions, and these abilities could be activated usually by holding down a specific button for a short time. In Tears of the Kingdom, the companion’s abilities have to be activated by interacting with a physical representation of the companion character that is moving around the battlefield. It’s cool to see a little party forming over the course of the game that aids you in battle. For the most part, the system works fine, but several times the AI for these companions would begin running away or repositioning on the field while I was attempting to call on one of their abilities, resulting in a desperate game of tag. Due to the abilities being tied to physical characters, occasionally if you have multiple companions active at one time (which you will want to in order to utilize any of the abilities at a given time), you will end up activating the wrong ability if companions are grouped up on top of each other. Again, not a huge issue, but another area of clunky interaction that feels like it could have been implemented better.
Enemy variety was another criticism of Breath of the Wild that Tears of the Kingdom has improved upon. Many of the same enemies that were present in Breath of the Wild remain in Tears of the Kingdom, enemies like Bokoblins, Lizalfos, Moblins, and Stalfos. There are a few new additions to the series such as the robotic Zonai constructs, the monkey-like Horriblins that cling to the ceilings of caves, and flying creatures called Aerocuda that can attack from the air as well as carry other enemies around and more. There are also new renditions of classic Zelda enemies like the Like-Like and Gibdo. Many of the new enemy types require new tactics to dispatch them, which adds more strategic layers and moment-to-moment decision-making during combat that Breath of the Wild lacks by comparison. Enemies also have a tiered system of ranking carried over from Breath of the Wild, which means you may stumble across different colored versions of these enemies that signal different elemental attacks they may possess or an increase in health and armor. With all of the new additions to the enemy roster combined with the returning list from Breath of the Wild, battles always feel a bit unique in the combinations of enemies that can spawn together.
Combat feels perhaps the most fun in Tears of the Kingdom’s boss fights, which have received a complete overhaul. Another large criticism of Breath of the Wild was how it handled boss fights, in that many of the major boss battles felt too visually similar to one another, and the overworld bosses were repeated far too frequently. Bosses in Tears of the Kingdom feel more similar to the boss fights of past Zelda games, that is to say they are unique in appearance from one another and are usually multi-phase battles requiring the use of one of the companion abilities in order to effectively take them on. The major bosses are fought at the end of the game’s temples (we will get to temples I promise), and while you don’t find a unique item in a temple like in past games, the companion ability feels like a compromise that achieves a similar feeling to using something like the hookshot during a boss battle in Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time. While many of the bosses tend to fall on the easier side in regard to their overall difficulty, they are all engaging and fun to take on and feel suitably epic in scale and spectacle. There are a few new overworld bosses like the fearsome three-headed Gleeok and puzzle-like Box Construct that have a number of fun attack patterns to learn. While the added variety is an improvement over Breath of the Wild, these overworld bosses do still repeat a bit too frequently to feel really unique and special, but that doesn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things. The boss battles are some of the most fun you will have playing Tears of the Kingdom.
The last major area of the gameplay to discuss is the puzzle-solving, an important pillar of any good Legend of Zelda game. Puzzle-solving comes in many forms in Tears of the Kingdom. Puzzles are primarily built around the different Zonai abilities: Ultrahand, Ascend, Recall, and Fuse. Your puzzle-solving abilities will be tested in the game’s numerous shrines, in the temples, and traversing the world itself.
Starting with shrines, they play out similarly to the shrines in Breath of the Wild. Each one will contain a small series of rooms with a puzzle or combat challenge, and like Breath of the Wild, sometimes the puzzle lies in gaining access or locating the shrine itself. Some puzzles play out like small mini-games, like trying to hit a rolling ball with a makeshift bat that will launch the ball to hit a target, some trap Link in an enclosed space and task him with manipulating the environment and his abilities in order to escape. Some of the combat-focused shrines will take away all of your gear leaving you with limited resources. Combat in these shrines feels like a puzzle in itself, trying to work out how best to take out each of the Zonai Construct enemies in the safest way possible. While the combat challenges can get a little tedious to complete over time, the shrines in general usually remain engaging and are a fun shakeup to the gameplay.
The other main avenue of puzzle solving comes from using Ultrahand to create a number of devices and vehicles that serve a wide range of purposes. There are several locations around the world and in shrines that have pieces of Zonai technology spread out to use for crafting vehicles and devices. You are also able to collect portable versions of these devices that you can spawn anywhere to make contraptions on the fly. Zonai technology has a few limitations placed on it. Link can only operate a vehicle for a short amount of time indicated by the size of his energy meter, which can be upgraded in The Depths. Not only that, but certain pieces of Zonai tech will expire after some time, so you are not able to ride them endlessly across the entire game world.
One shrine was a large room full of bottomless pits that tasked you to use a Zonai glider in the shape of a bird and some fans to create a flying machine in order to cross the pits. Other shrines required building some sort of vehicle you could use to transport a crystal that acts as a key over longer distances or rough terrain. Sometimes you will construct platforms, create structures to route electricity, build bridges, or even complex shapes that carry you over split rails. I mentioned using Zonai vehicles earlier when attempting to reach various sky islands and the same principles apply here. These sorts of puzzles were some of my absolute favorites in the game because each solution I found felt unique to me. Sometimes I would create a floating platform that would carry me over a gap with ease. Other times I would take a platform, carry it over to a gap above a bottomless pit, drop it, and quickly use Recall to reverse it in time and make a bridge with a short window of opportunity to use. Every puzzle felt like it had an intended solution, in addition to any number of other possible and viable solutions that were only limited by the imagination. Try something, if it works, then it’s a solution. These puzzles were some of the most satisfying to solve, and the amount of creativity and ingenuity that came about in solving these puzzles is directly linked to the primary abilities you can use in Tears of the Kingdom. Like any puzzle game, some puzzles are better than others, some more difficult than others, but rarely would there be a puzzle that completely stumped me. They had just the right amount of complexity to make me stop and think, execute a plan, and ultimately I walked away from most of the puzzles satisfied.
The culmination of each of these pillars of gameplay, exploration, combat, and puzzle solving, are found in the Tears of the Kingdom’s temples. I’ve discussed a number of criticisms of Breath of the Wild in this review, but arguably the biggest point of contention with longtime Zelda fans were the Divine Beasts that served as that game’s equivalent to the dungeons of prior games in the series. What were once mysterious and intricately designed labyrinths with treasure to find, traps to dodge, enemies and bosses to fight, and puzzles to solve, designed to be unique to each area of a given game, were replaced with giant moving structures that all looked the same, featured a couple of puzzles, and boss fights that were cut from the same mold with slight changes between themselves. Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild, for a longtime Zelda fan, didn’t hold a candle to the dungeons they came to expect.
Tears of the Kingdom implements an experience that takes elements of a traditional Zelda dungeon but approached in a new way. Unlike the Divine Beasts, temples are themed around the surrounding area you find them in and are usually centered around a specific element (Ex. Wind temple or Fire temple). Each of the temples are laid out completely different from one another consisting of different structures comprising multiple floors or rooms. Each of these temples usually tasks Link and company with finding a certain number of devices in order to unlock locks on a big door or stop some problematic activity from occurring. These objectives are usually able to be completed in any order. You need to explore the temples thoroughly, fighting occasional enemies and solving small puzzles, dodging traps, and performing some acrobatics, in order to open up a room to challenge a temple boss.
While not technically part of the temple, there is usually a sequence that involves Link traveling with a companion on a quest to reveal or discover the location of said temple. These semi-scripted events are a lot of fun and are unique enough that they feel like part of the experience of completing a temple in Tears of the Kingdom, even if they aren’t physically attached to the structure itself. These activities include fighting unique bosses or performing death-defying platforming and gliding high in the air. These sections take you to parts of the world that are different from anything else you will find in the game which adds to the sense of uniqueness in discovering each of the temples.
While the ideas present in the open design of the temples are mostly interesting, they are a bit of a mixed bag in terms of execution. Temples like Fire and Lightning feel the closest to a traditional Zelda dungeon with multiple floors, interesting puzzles and traversal, and an amazing sense of visual design, while other temples feel more akin to the Divine Beasts or just don’t have as interesting of puzzle mechanics or visual presence in the world. While having a companion accompany you with a unique ability leads to some interesting interactions within the temples, it’s not quite a replacement for finding a key item in a past Zelda game where it felt those items radically opened up how you explored the world and approached gameplay. While certain temples play with fan expectations in fun and interesting ways, others feel like they lack substance by comparison. In traditional Zelda dungeons, part of the exploration was finding keys that allowed you to open locked doors that would lead to new areas. In one of the early shrines in Tears of the Kingdom, there is a locked door that is opened with a small key. One would think this would have been a mechanic implemented into the temples, but it is confusingly absent, a real missed opportunity. The temples, like the bosses they house, are some of the most fun you will have playing Tears of the Kingdom. While Nintendo is playing with some interesting ideas in regards to these new style temples, and they are a definitive improvement over what was present in Breath of the Wild, none of them elevate above the dungeons of previous Zelda games.
As a longtime fan of the Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom brings some mixed feelings. There are plenty of areas of the game that I would want to see tweaked, things from more traditional Zelda games I’d love to see brought back. But when compared to Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom is an improvement in nearly every way. While there are frustrations with interfacing with the game and the open-ended nature can conflict with telling a great story, the game is a blast to play, is full of things to see and do, and offers some of the coolest set pieces and character moments the series has ever seen. If you are a newer Zelda fan who has played Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom is a no-brainer recommendation. If you are a longtime Zelda fan, Tears of the Kingdom still gets a recommendation, just know going in that the game isn’t the end-all-be-all perfect blending of traditional and open-ended Zelda games. Despite any misgivings or criticisms expressed in this review, I want the main takeaway to be that The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is a great game that provides hours of entertainment and fun. It’s a more interesting game than its predecessor, to the point that if (years from now) I were going to choose a game to replay, it would be Tears of the Kingdom. If you are looking for a big fantasy adventure to go on, look no further than The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on Nintendo Switch.
