The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Released on May 12, 2023 for the Nintendo Switch by Nintendo and developed by Nintendo EPD, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom expands Link's 3D, open world, action-RPG adventures into the sky...and under the ground

2017's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild breathed new life into the long running action-RPG franchise. After 2011's Skyward Sword offered players an experience that didn't quite live up to the Zelda label of excellence, the franchise began to feel a bit tired. Breath of the Wild reinvigorated the series by bringing it back to the beginning, taking the open world, no handrails approach of the original 1987 The Legend of Zelda game and setting it free in a graphically pleasing, highly interactive, 23.5 square mile world. The result is perfection, a game to which I awarded a 10 out of 10 score six years ago. Where could Nintendo go from there? The answer is, quite literally, to the sky.

Where we're going, we don't need clothes

I put off playing Tears of the Kingdom for about a month, knowing that once I started playing, the game would take over all of my free time. Indeed, Tears of the Kingdom is a daunting prospect. 15-30 hours is generally my sweet spot for a game, as there are just so many other games to play...and er, other things to do in life. If I've got to play a game for triple-digit hours, it better be worth it. My wife and son got me the Tears of the Kingdom for father's day, though, and I played for seven hours that day, getting the sinking feeling that, yes, my hobby time in my next few months would be almost entirely Zelda-centric. And for the last three months, it has been. Does this game have the substance to warrant that?

Life is short, and I need a shirt

In the game's opening segment, essentially a glorified cutscene, Princess Zelda and her warrior companion, Link, explore the catacombs beneath Hyrule Castle. They find a terrifying, zombiefied Ganondorf, who takes Link's arm and shatters the Master Sword, as Zelda mysteriously vanishes. Link, the series' player character, then awakens on a floating island, high in the sky. Hyrule Castle now floats off in the distance, and the vast map from the previous game is now altered by debris that fell when the Castle, along with many islands, including the one on which Link now finds himself, broke free from underground and rose to the sky, in an event Hyrule citizens have dubbed "The Upheaval." On the island, Link is given a new, robot-like arm, and learns some new skills, such as the ability to craft tools from materials and how to phase through ceilings onto rooftops. He also gains a mission.

 

Find. A damn. Shirt

Link will need to go down to the surface to four widespread map locations, in order to investigate a major disturbance in each of those areas. Once there, he'll have to fix what's wrong, befriend a character chosen to become that area's newest sage, journey into the local dungeon, defeat its boss, and gain its sacred stone, which gives Link's new companion the ability to become a powerful spectre, who follows Link around for the rest of the game. These sages have special attacks, or abilities that enhance Link's movement. Once Link has the sages at his side, the reforged Master Sword, and maybe a great armor set earned from completing quests, and maybe a bunch of extra health hearts and stamina bars gained from beating shrines and dungeons, and maybe a bunch of special status enhancing meals and elixirs cooked from meat, grains, fruits, vegetables, and monster parts Link has gathered on his quest, and maybe a bunch of great backup handheld weapons and bows, he'll be ready to dive into the pit below the now-floating Hyrule Castle to destroy the evil Ganondorf once and for all. Or the player can just dive down there right after the game starts with Link wearing nothing but a pair of underwear, welding nothing but a tree-branch, with not a soul at his side, or an item in his inventory. It's really up to the player. 

Well, I've got a shirt now, so I guess I'll do all that other stuff too

I decided early in that I would only play through Tears of the Kingdom's main quest, avoiding the game's legion, seemingly infinite optional ones. I managed to make it through two of the game's four overworld dungeons before I found myself getting distracted. I don't mean distracted away from the game. I mean distracted by the game. At first, I'd set rules for myself. If I saw a Shrine, which is a small puzzle or combat-based mini-dungeon (of which the game contains a mostly optional 152), while traveling between dungeons, I'd stop to complete it. Shrines, which were also found in Breath of the Wild, serve an ingenious function here. On a practical level, for every four Shrines a player completes, they can choose to add either another heart to their health meter or another piece to their stamina wheel (stamina is used when Link drifts through the sky with his paraglider, climbs, runs, etc.). However, Shrines also act as powerful teaching tools. 

Me and my shirt are here to learn

The game's crafting mechanic essentially involves Link using telekinesis to lift an object and connect it to another object. Tears of the Kingdom reveals that an ancient race, adept at machinery once resided in Hyrule, and Link has access to parts they've left behind, like wheels, rockets, fans, and many more objects (fueled by ancient batteries) that can be attached to boards, slabs, sleds, and...many more objects to the point that if the player is in any way adept at engineering, they can create cars, flying machines, weapons and tools that essentially break the game. The Shrines often provide the player with myriad tools and materials that allow them to solve the central puzzle using a vast array of methods, thus encouraging experimentation that provides knowledge the player can then apply to the vast world outside of the Shrines. I can't think of another game that promotes such a seemingly limitless amount of innovation on the player's part.

Look ma, I made this here flying thing, and now I wear shirts!

More than perhaps any game ever made, Tears of the Kingdom is whatever the player makes of it. On the walks to Shrines, as I had started to collect better weapons and materials, I often found myself getting pulled into fights with monster more and more, as I knew I now had a better chance to win, and pick up even more materials. Like in Breath of the Wild, weapons break over time, but Link now has the ability to fuse a material to them (and to arrows as well), making them far more powerful. However, I soon found that I wanted to have more success in battles than my armor was affording me...and I got sucked into quests to both upgrade my current armor and find better armor as well. I even discovered that the horses I boarded at stable in Breath of the Wild were there waiting for me in this game (along with a bunch of new, tameable horses in the overworld). Needless to say, once I started working on quests, my noble steed from 2017 came out of retirement. All of this also made me want to unlock all of Tears of the Kingdom's map. This is done for each region, like in Breath of the Wild, by finding that given region's tower...and like in Breath of the Wild, the map has many regions. Unlike in Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom's towers launch Link a mile into the air, allowing for even more exploration. After all, there are many sky islands to explore, as well, which is a blast when you're launched in the air from a tower, and can use the paraglider you acquire early in the game to drift around. Before I knew it, I was 100 hours into Tears of the Kingdom, and not regretting a second of it.

Get on my horse I'll take you round the universe and all the other places too...

That's not to say I didn't find moments of aggravation. For instance, I avoided the game's underworld area until I was about 3/4 through the game, not seeing its importance. Eventually, I realized there were some vital materials found there that I could use, but admittedly the vast area, which is just as large as the world above it, is just there to give players something more to do in a game that already has A LOT for player's to do. Still, I can't fault the game for the underworld's existence. Like much of Tears of the Kingdom, the underworld is a fun optional bonus. My biggest complaint lies in a moment early in one of the dungeons, where I knew I was solving a puzzle correctly, but wasn't getting the desired outcome. Eventually, I realized that I hadn't triggered a cutscene in the first room by activating a switch. Those 15 minutes out of the roughly 7000 I played Tears of the Kingdom were frustrating. I don't quite think I can knock off points for that either. And finally...considering the Link and Zelda here have now been through so much over the last two games, and the incredibly heightened emotions at the end of this game, I really, really, really wish they had kissed at the end. Really, any romantic gesture would have been nice. I'm generally a "Link and Zelda should stay platonic" guy, but considering what happens to the two of them together in these two games, they could have at least held hands at the end...something romantic at least! In the face of what this game offers, though, all of my complaints feel like minor nitpicks.

Yes, I did it, but hear me out: What if *we* did it?

In fact, Tears is so vast in scope, it's easy to take the perfection of its skeletal structure for granted. The controls, which have to do a considerable amount of heavy lifting considering just how much Link can do in this game, have the classic Nintendo stamp of perfection. The graphics are a touch better than Breath of the Wild's, and feature some new, subtle touches, like a tint of green at dusk (the Shrines also carry a new green/grey color theme). I also appreciate Zelda's new design here, as she certainly looks like Zelda, but feels very unique to her previous counterparts, almost Bohemian. The overall graphical theme continues the cartoon/Miyazaki feel of Breath of the Wild, but despite the additions to the already massive size of the overworld, I never experienced any slowdown in framerate. The music also follows Breath of the Wild's more minimalist leanings, yet features many moments that build to dense and frenetic climaxes. In particular, I enjoy the musical dynamics in Tears' dungeons, as the music often starts out quietly, and becomes more complex and symphonic as the player progresses, so that it's eventually a full and beautiful orchestral piece.

Me and my crew are straight killers, and we ALL wear shirts!

After first trying to essentially speedrun the game, then finding I was enjoying it so much I basically began to drag out finishing it, I finally decided to take on Tears of the Kingdom's final dungeon and bosses. It was here I found the game still had something to teach me. Up until that point, befitting the way I usually play video games, I'd simply bullied my wait through Tears' combat, despite the fact that several Shrines force the player to focus on combat's finer points, like dodging, parrying, and flurry rushes. I've never been one for finesse, but I soon found the final boss kicking my clumsy carcass all around the arena. I had to take a moment to refocus my skills and get my muscle memory back up to par, so that I could instead kick his clumsy carcass all around the arena...which also showed me that combat in Tears of the Kingdom is yet again whatever the player makes of it. With the armor, weapons, and materials I'd acquired in my time with the game, the final fight needed some finesse on my end. If I'd played longer and worked to get my armor, weapons, and materials to their strongest points, I could have bullied Ganondorf all around the arena for the whole fight instead of just half of it.

 

All due respect, Demon King Ganondorf, but I'm about to half finesse, half bully you to death

Nintendo has done it again. It shouldn't be a surprise at this point, but 12 years ago, as far as the Zelda franchise went, the Nintendo bag of tricks seemed empty. Tears of the Kingdom, the franchise's second straight masterpiece in a record full of them, hints that the contents of that bag just might be limitless.

SCORE: 10/10