4/5 ★ – Jumpmanryan's review of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

8 out of 10! First things first - Tears of the Kingdom has the greatest creative freedom of any video game probably ever. It’s genuinely incredible how many ways the player can go about solving any problem or puzzle. THIS is Tears of the Kingdom’s greatest accomplishment and it deserves every bit of praise that it’s received in this aspect. However, while Tears of the Kingdom excels phenomenally in creative freedom, it isn’t nearly as fantastic in other areas. For one, similar to Breath of the Wild, I think the open world is generally bland. It’s vast, but most of what you’re finding is the same. Shrines, towers, enemy camps, or glyphs is pretty much it. Sure, there are caves and ruins, but those also lead to the things I just listed. If Tears of the Kingdom was only 20 hours long, this wouldn’t be as big of a deal. But most players take around 45+ hours to complete the game and there’s just so little variety in what you discover that it gets genuinely bland after a while. I feel like the new Zelda titles have been compared a lot with another revolutionary open-world game in Elden Ring. And while it’s unfair to make a direct comparison to say one is better than the other. I think that Zelda’s creative freedom vs Elden Ring’s explorative open-world full of discovery is where they drastically differentiate. When I played Elden Ring, I wanted to explore every nook & cranny on the map because there was *always* something interesting there. Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t do this. I’ve gone to a lot of tiny alcoves on the map and there’s nothing to be found. Instead, Tears of the Kingdom focuses on ‘what you can DO’ rather than ‘what you can FIND’. I don’t really have a complaint on these differences in particular, but I thought it was worth pointing out since there are constant comparisons between these games’ open-world designs. And regardless of this comparison, I still think Tears of the Kingdom’s discoverability in its exploration is a bit lackluster. There’re also a decent amount of other, smaller gripes. Not being able to pause during cutscenes, menu navigation is clunky, champion abilities being EXTREMELY annoying to use due to those champions not being able to fit on certain platforms or not even following you around properly, some framerate dropping when a lot is on screen, being unable to disable subtitles, etc. These issues are small in individual portions, but putting them all together becomes a bigger, more noticeable issue. However, I still believe that Tears of the Kingdom is an improvement over Breath of the Wild in almost every aspect. But when Breath of the Wild was already one of my bottom-tier Zelda titles, that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. BUT, while I didn’t enjoy Breath of the Wild enough to continue it further than 20 hours, Tears of the Kingdom was compelling enough to enjoy throughout. The new abilities are much more inventive and creative than in Breath of the Wild, even if the Ultrahand controls never stop feeling clunky. The verticality adds so much needed variety in environmental traverse. And there’s a MUCH better sense of direction as the story is immediately more intriguing and leading. There’s also the change to Temples rather than Divine Beasts in this one, which is a VERY welcome change. The Divine Beasts sucked in Breath of the Wild, as they were barely distinct from one another in most aspects. The Temples are much better with their own sense of identity + a unique boss fight to cap each of them off. That being said, none of these Temples hold a candle to most of the traditional Zelda dungeons. But regardless, it is a great change. Just not as much of a change in the direction I would’ve preferred. The story still isn’t anything spectacular. And, again, the cutscenes are shown via going to certain areas of the map, which is just not an optimal way to tell a story. The champion characters you obtain as companions are all very one-note and unmemorable. But the overall story is still solid when you put together the whole package. It’s just that the *telling* of it’s story leaves a bit to be desired. And while I appreciated the underground area existing for a change of pace, I never really had the desire to go down there. It was never as fun as the overworld, but also never necessarily *unenjoyable*. Just kinda…. there. I know that it sounds like I’m bagging on Tears of the Kingdom a lot in this review, but I want it to be clear that I still think it’s a good game. It’s a massive improvement over Breath of the Wild and was overall an enjoyable experience from beginning to end. But there’s such an abundance of overtly high-praise reviews for this title right now. And while my score for it certainly isn’t bad - most would be interested in why it isn’t getting a perfect score rather than why it’s getting a *good* score. And while I had complaints about it’s more bland open-world, lack of discovery, and manner of storytelling - I still found immense joy in it’s incredibly creative systems, fun new abilities, and the return of more dungeon-like aspects. And, at the risk of being redundant, I really can’t stress enough how special the creative freedom is in Tears of the Kingdom. It’s an astonishing feat that is truly unique to this game alone, and this creativity in player agency by itself could justify the ‘masterpiece’ reviews that most others are giving it. But at the end of the day, Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t excel enough in other areas to justify that type of ‘masterpiece’ rating from me. And while I’m glad to be enjoying Zelda again after not enjoying Breath of the Wild much at all - Tears of the Kingdom is still on the lower-end of my overall Zelda tier-list. But that’s moreso indicative of how incredible almost every mainline entry in this series is rather than a knock against Tears of the Kingdom.