The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is battling with utopian expectations. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild represents a radical and successful reinvention of The Legend of Zelda – a series considered by many to be the pinnacle of game design. Despite many changes to Zelda’s formula, Breath of the Wild remains a huge success and its legacy only grows stronger over time.
Giving Breath of the Wild a direct sequel (which is rare in the Zelda canon) is a dangerous prospect. The resulting game lacks the novelty and undeniable, hard-to-recreate impact of the previous game. Instead, it gives players the chance to look at the world through a whole new lens with new possibilities for a dazzling adventure, providing players with an incredible amount of autonomy in their own lives. how they approach almost any gaming situation.
Tears of the Kingdom mostly takes place on the ground in Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule, but it’s not like a re-read. New transportation options that change the way you explore the world combine with the passage of time to set this Hyrule apart, such as visiting the town you grew up in after years away. You have a good idea of where things are, but they’re different and fun to explore once you get there. The balance between the new and the familiar on land is well-executed, and the islands in the sky create entirely new, important areas to explore. Figuring out how to jump from island to island in the sky is always thrilling, and exploring Hyrule’s caves is dark and scary, creating powerful exploration options to suit your mood .
Link’s new abilities are the main attraction of Tears of the Kingdom. Fuse, which allows you to combine weapons, shields, items, etc., rewards experimentation and makes every item in the game impressive – every rock lying on the ground, every plant you pick up, every leaf Be sure to pass on Zonai technology – each has a certain value. It makes the act of gathering more fun because you can ask yourself silly questions like, “What if I attached an acorn to a edged stick?” and go to the answer.
Item degradation makes a profit, which is a system I appreciate for turning everything I pick up into something I actually use. Improved quality of life also makes it much easier to manage your various tools, and Fuse means you can collect and combine more weapons if you hate the idea of leaving everything behind.
Ascend, which allows Link to travel through any ceiling for a certain distance, is impressive in its implementation and practicality. It’s one of those abilities that completely changes the way you move in the sometimes familiar world. In retrospect, the thing that causes objects in the world to move back in time, often makes me question whether something works, only to discover that, yes, it absolutely works in different ways. interesting.
The king of possibilities, and frankly the king of Tears of the Kingdom, is the Ultrahand. The point of simplification is that it allows Links to connect objects. I was intimidated by the new mechanic when it was introduced and the controls took some getting used to, but it didn’t take me long to become Hyrule’s number one combined engineer and contractor, and I really like this title.
Combining objects to solve simple puzzles to creating complex flying devices with a variety of fans, rockets and batteries is a fun fun that never takes you too long for any one. which project. Tears of the Kingdom recognizes what you’re trying to do in most cases, which means simple actions like attaching the steering wheel to a four-wheeled pedestal will work without fuss. What. But it also takes up much more complex constructions, and I’m often amazed at what I can quickly create and apply to puzzle solving.
The Ultrahand is that rare mechanic that sneaks into your brain and makes you think about it outside of the game. The highest praise I can give is that I dreamed of the Ultrahand, spinning the pillars and attaching them to the boxes in my sleeping brain the same way I see the orange and blue circles. in my dream when I first played Portal. That is the most important achievement of Tears of the Kingdom.
The adventure is also full of other highlights. The story begins with a compelling conceit and only comes to a brilliant conclusion. Nor does it repeat a major narrative problem of the first game: Where has Zelda been all this time? Thankfully, the story knows it’s a sequel and acknowledges what came before. You can check past characters and places to see how they’ve changed. The story doesn’t stray too far from the bounds of what we’d expect from a Zelda plot, but I like its twists and turns and I’m eager to see where it goes.
Structurally, Tears of the Kingdom familiar with combat work the same functionally. New temples are fun to tackle and reward fast-moving locations that dot the map and feature some traditional Zelda dungeons. The new dungeons are simplified but without sacrificing puzzle design while being easier to understand. The new dungeons also have great bosses. I appreciate that they are more diverse and allow you to rely on specific, recently learned abilities to win.
Video game sequels often repeat the previous ones. It looks a little nicer, plays a bit smoother, retains important mechanics while introducing new ones and continuing the story. Tears of the Kingdom checks most of these boxes, but removing the Runes from the first game and providing players with new Runes to use in exploring a familiar but undeniably new world is a clever thing. Nearly every encounter, whether puzzle, obstacle course, or combat, must be reviewed. It makes you think in new ways. I no longer get goosebumps exploring Hyrule like I used to, but I’ve experienced new emotions on both levels of detail from solving individual puzzles and on a larger scale by returning to one of the my favorite video game locations. They say you can never go home again, but I would love to go back to Hyrule with all the new stuff.
