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

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the highly anticipated follow up to Breath of the Wild. People (myself included) have been eagerly waiting to get their hands on it and now that it's out, how does it hold up and compare to the amazing first game? Well, for me at least, it's no contest. In just about every way this game is better than Breath of the Wild. One of the major complaints about the first game was the weapon durability system and, while not eliminated, it's been improved by the new weapon fusion system. Unlike last game where you would be picking up weapons left and right, in this game most weapons have been decayed meaning they have a lower attack power and durability. However, due to this new fusion system, pretty much everything becomes a weapon. You got a shitty sword? Well fuse it with Red ChuChu jelly and now you have a fire sword. This is just one of the many possibilities with this new system. You no longer have to worry so much about "saving" particular weapons, because you can always just remake your powerful weapons using the same materials. This pretty much eliminates my major issue with the durability system and makes the game SO much better in my opinion. That combined with the new building system where you can pretty much stick any two objects together and you have this game where it feels like the possibilities are endless and I'm just in awe at how well it all works. And this game is just so big. While the sense of wonder is diminished due to how Hyrule is the same map as last game, but with how much they add, the Depths, the Sky Islands, and all the new Wells and Caves, and you get a game that's over twice as big and it's filled with fun stuff to do. Now, I did have some issues with this game. While I did enjoy the story of this one more, due to the open nature of this game, it has issues. Because you can tackle things in any order, the game in unaware of what exactly you've done when. Due to this, there is A LOT of repetitive scenes and dialogue that just tell you the same things. I understand you need to make sure all players have heard certain information, it does get a bit tiring when you've seen basically the same cutscene 4 times. Another issue I have is how they once again sidelined Zelda. I feel it's a BIT better in this game (don't want to delve into how becuase spoilers), it's still ultimately a game where Zelda is pretty much absent. This really sucks, and if they do another game in this universe I really hope they don't do this again. This is just a weird nitpick, but the Sheikah technology that was such a major part of the world in the last game is just gone. No real mention of it either. This just feels weird to me, but it's not a huge deal I feel. I did nearly everything in this game. The only things I didn't was get every armor piece, find all the wells, and get all the Bubbuls or Koroks. Other than that, every Side Quest, Side Adventure, Shrine, Lightroot, etc. I did it. And man, it's not this game's fault, and it does do things a bit better than most, but I am overall getting tired of the tropes of open world games Overall though, this game is a satisfying improvement on the first. I am interested in where they take this formula from here. Will they make another game in this universe? Will the next game be all new? How much will carry over? I know they've said this is the new style of Zelda going forward so we'll have to see how that pans out, but I'm optimisitic.