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

Platform: Switch Time Played: 115 hours Status: Beaten Back when Breath of the Wild was released in 2017, it was the first game in the Zelda franchise that I had ever beaten, and I mainly attributed that to the game being such a big departure from the rest of the lineup. Since then, I have played practically every mainline Zelda title except for a small few and I was incredibly excited for Tears of the Kingdom to finally come out and blow away my expectations all over again, just like the series did six years prior, and boy did it ever. First of all, this game's story is genuinely the best story and plot in a Zelda game period. From the opening moments to the climactic finale, this story just kept pumping out insane and memorable moment after insane and memorable moment. I loved the whole aspect of Ganondorf being this ancient menace that has basically been fucking up Hyrule since day one, but his true body has stayed underground for so long due to past events that we get to witness as the story progresses, and having Zelda be flung back in time allows us as the audience to be immediately attached emotionally because we already have an attachment to Zelda, so by having her directly involved into that side of the plot, it becomes much more engaging. Not to mention that said past events are so utterly awesome; every scene with Ganondorf was fucking insane, awesome, epic, intense, and masterful. The number of times I just found myself filled with giddy glee just because of how awesome Ganondorf is was insane; his design was amazing, all of the blood-red and black aura surrounding him and his Gloom was awesome, his Demon King form looked even more awesome, the cutscenes where he invades Hyrule before and after obtaining the Secret Stone, the scenes of him obtaining said Secret Stones, Rauru and the Sages' fight against him, and all of the scenes during the fucking amazing climax. Like holy shit that climax had no right going so hard, but I'll get to that in a second. Unlike Breath of the Wild, this game uses the memories, or Dragon Tears in this case, to tie into the greater narrative, and if the quest is completed, the player is rewarded with a much more cohesive and emotionally driven narrative than would otherwise be experienced. You get to watch Zelda on her journey in the founding times of Hyrule, watch her and the sages fail to truly defeat Ganondorf, leading to the events of the main game millennia later, but not before Zelda sacrifices herself in one of the most absolutely harrowing and heartbreaking scenes I have ever witnessed in a videogame; shit almost had me bursting into tears. Like seriously, that moment was stuck in my head for several days afterward because of just how utterly profound and crazy it was to have witnessed something like that in a Zelda game of all things because I had never expected this game to end up experiencing such an amazing story when starting up this game. And to bring up the climax again, what a phenomenal one it was. Diving into the deepest and darkest area of the Depths in order to face off against Ganondorf's swarm of minions alongside the five Sages that you have helped throughout the course of the game, only to face the Gerudo and Demon King in a one-on-one sword duel with him literally able to dodge like Link can before a Flurry Rush was awesome. That moment when he transforms into his Demon King form only for his health bar to just continuing scaling the sides of the screen caused my jaw to hit the floor, and it only kept on dropping. After the intense battle with the Demon King, you finally beat him; but his innate need and desire to see the world crumble and become shrouded in darkness shows his absolute devotion and sacrifice just like Zelda had before, as he rips the Secret Stone that he murdered Sonia for off of his head, and eats it, transforming him into the Demon Dragon. Holy. Fuck. This moment was amazing not only because it was set up beautifully by all the talks of Draconification throughout the story, and then by Zelda utilizing it to restore the Master Sword stronger than it ever has been, but by having Ganondorf utilize this plot device, we not only have an amazing and memorable final battle but said final battle also serves as a parallel to Zelda's transformation; both characters transformed into Immortal Dragons in order to complete the goal that they were so determined to accomplish, that they sacrificed their very being to allow said goals to come to fruition. Genius. The battle against the Demon Dragon itself is also amazing, and the ending with you falling to save Zelda after the spirits of Rauru and Sonia return to transform her back was beautiful. What an amazing story to pair with such an amazing game; blows Breath of the Wild's story out of the water, along with every other Zelda story in my opinion. And to think that I've talked this much and haven't even touched on the actual game itself. I played this game immediately after finishing Breath of the Wild, and personally, I find all of the comments that the map feels the same to be false as I found the entire map to have this new feel that made it feel totally distinct from the previous installment while still feeling familiar. I loved the addition of caves as those were truly fun and entertaining to explore, probably the best addition to the map period; every cave I saw I had to explore, the vibes, atmosphere, and everything about them was great. With the amount of showcasing they did for the Sky Islands in the promotional material leading up to the game, I really thought that there was going to be a lot more of them; outside of the opening area and two temples, you never really have to explore the skies, and even then it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot compared to everything else, which is a shame because I would've loved to have more bigger and significant areas to explore in the sky, but what we do have here is still great. The Depths were crazy to first explore; this deep, dark, and damp area that was just fully shrouded in darkness from all over with a decayed look covering everything. It took me a long while before I was ready and willing to explore down there, and while I preferred the caves, and overall rest of the map to the Depths, it was still a fun place to explore overall, and the permanent Gloom damage until you reached a Lightroot or the surface. In terms of the gameplay in general, a lot of it is carried over from Breath of the Wild, and that means that it's phenomenal. Everything feels so tight and smooth to control, combat feels like a breeze, movement feels smooth and silky just as it should, and the new Ultrahand and Fusion mechanics allowed both exploration and combat to be more inventive, original, and fun almost each and every time you picked up the controller. One thing I will say is that it took me forever to get used to Ultrahand, like a much longer amount of time than I would have preferred to get used to the mechanic. I spent the first 35 to 40 hours of my playthrough just exploring the world and visiting Shrines before I started visiting villages to complete the Regional Phenomena and overall main story, but the sheer length of time it took my brain to start finally thinking in proper ways to solve the Shrines and for me to stop feeling like I was stupid during every Shrine I visited took way too long. Now this may be on me, as I had just finished Breath of the Wild, so perhaps the similarities between Magnesis in that game and Ultrahand in this game threw me off a lot, and the overall style and manner in which the Shrines are designed are very different between this game and its predecessor, with this game focusing much more on the puzzle aspect in terms of you really having to sit there and think of what the best possible strategy was compared to the last game where the answer to the puzzle came almost immediately. I feel like I had gotten too used to the instant gratification and reward of the Shrines in the previous game, and so the extra amount of time that I felt like I was spending in the Shrines in this game felt like a little too much at the beginning, but over time I grew to relearn how my brain processed the Shrines and learned to thoroughly enjoy them for a bigger and much more significant portion of my playthrough, especially considered I visited and completed every single Shrine. Once I got the hang of Ultrahand, it was incredibly fun to craft and put together Zonai devices in order to create creations that helped progression or traversal, and once I got the steering stick, I felt unstoppable. Making vehicles on wheels or ones that could fly felt so awesome, controlling them felt incredible, and the mechanic felt so versatile overall. Truly an incredible feature to make this expansive game even more expansive and to allow your imagination to run wild. And as I said earlier, the Fuse / Fusion mechanic allowed combat to not only feel more involved, but it allowed item drops to become much more significant outside of the cooking system. Assigning many items seen in the previous game certain elemental or gameplay properties truly made your inventory feel much more meaningful, yet another fucking phenomenal idea. This time around, unlike my Breath of the Wild playthrough, I decided to go out of my way to collect every outfit in the game, along with tasking myself to complete whatever side quests felt fun enough to invest my time into, and man, doing this felt like such a worthwhile endeavor. Having all of these amazing-looking outfits at my disposal not only let me enjoy playing through the game with immense drip, but the amount of cool and new buffs that I now had at my disposal because of all of these greatly designed new and returning outfits were great. Like that Glide set, woo boy did that one get a lot of use after it was completed. And some of the side quests in this game are such a significant improvement over what Breath of the Wild had; saving the beachside village from the pirate invaders was so fun, along with helping said village rebuild afterward; the mayoral election was also a fun one that comes to mind, along with many other great little side adventures that just boosted the overall experience. Even the game's score is an improvement over what was seen in Breath of the Wild. Sure, a majority of the score is this great, atmospheric ambiance that fits perfectly when exploring the overworld, but the tracks that play when visiting villages, exploring dungeons, fighting bosses, and during cutscenes; it's all so phenomenal. My favorite track from the game that I can think of off the top of my head is the Colgera Theme, that shit slapped insanely hard. My biggest gripe besides getting used to the game's mechanics was probably the game's performance issues, which weren't really issues per say, but seeing this game slow down significantly at times made me want to see the Switch's successor more than ever, and sooner rather than later. Overall, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom blew my exceedingly high expectations out of the water. This game was just pure and utterly amazing, and even going into it I knew it would be, but not THIS much. The absolutely phenomenal story, gameplay, mechanics, controls, environments, characters, locations, design, aesthetics, everything. Shit was just a beautiful experience overall. Sure at some points during my playthrough I thought that I preferred Breath of the Wild more, but this just has so many improvements, some that I haven't even named, that this just shines above it. If Nintendo continues to make Zelda games like this, we're set; masterpiece after masterpiece. Sure parts of me want the traditional 2D and 3D Zelda games of old to make their triumphant return, but with both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom being so phenomenal, I'm just left in anticipation for what the Hero of the Wild and his beloved Princess Zelda have in store for themselves in the future.