4.5/5 ★ – Zimtiki's review of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Months after the events of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Hyrule has returned to normal, and Zelda and Link are in a scientific expedition that leads them deep underneath Hyrule Castle, where they come across Ganondorf himself, leading to Zelda getting thrown back in time to the beginning of Hyrule’s history. Link falls asleep AGAIN for several months and wakes up to Hyrule being clouded by floating islands. While this whole scenario seems really cool, and really reminiscent of Skyward Sword (which is what I was hoping for), it ends up not being worth it at all. Sadly, this is the Zelda game where everyone realized that Nintendo doesn’t give a FUCK about the story, and will retell the same one in different ways over and over again. For some reason, the original king of Hyrule is a goat, even though we SAW him as a human in Skyward sword, and he had a different name, idk. It feels like this game doesn’t even belong in the same canon, it almost doesn’t even FEEL like a Zelda story. Where BOTW’s story could be interpreted as having happened after the child-link timeline, this game goes nowhere, has no connection to the other games, and seems to make up its own history. It’s super weird. I honestly don’t even remember the ending because it was so forgettable. It’s a damn shame. But if I’m hating on this game so hard, why did I give it a 4.5/5? Because of the gameplay. I do not know how they did it, but they TRIPLED the size of BOTW’s map, made it possible to combine ANY item in the game, make your own weapons, and even create extremely complex vehicles that open up this games sandbox to seemingly infinite levels of creativity. I spent 120 hours in this game and I still feel like I barely scratched the surface. The games story is NOT perfect, but the gameplay certainly comes close. I’d love to see them return to a more traditional Zelda game after this, with certain elements like climbing walls being included. Hopefully the next Zelda game will be a spectacle in the story department as well.