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

i’ve been trying to piece together why a sequel that i feel is undeniably better than its predecessor did not have near the same impact on me as said predecessor. my friends have been asking me why i dont have a disgusting amount of hours in totk the way that i do in botw, and for a while now i havent had an answer. to be clear, that answer is NOT me climbing on the “totk is just botw dlc” train. yall are weird for as many steps as totk takes forward, it becomes glaringly obvious that not every feature or type of content was treated equally in the transition between games. while shrines share the same name in both games, conceptually they are far different between the two entires and generally ask for very different types of thinking. shrines are a perfect example of the same idea being done differently in two games, and is what i feel makes the quest of hunting down all the shrines just as enjoyable in totk as it was in botw for as much time as i spent exploring the world and finding all the shrines though, most of my time was spent in botw was actually towards completing much of the more optional progression content — the koroks, the great fairies, and the compendium. this… is where totk lost me to see three incredibly substantial aspects of game completion/progression be left effectively untouched between the two games has been by far the biggest reason i havent sunk an insurmountable amount of hours into totk. i feel no gratification in completing the same korok puzzles i’ve already done, or upgrading the same armor pieces i maxed out 6 years ago. i have no desire to sneakily get pictures of every monster, animal, and equipment when those pictures already exist on my copy of botw from 2017. while yes, these are very much systems that the game does not expect you to complete, the idea that players who already did them in the last game should just… do them again… for the same experience and rewards is not something i have an interest in encouraging. i specifically highlighted shrines earlier as an example of the same concept being done differently in two games because that’s exactly what i feel these systems also deserved. if they wanted 1000 collectibles across the map that we would solve a quick puzzle for and then turn in for slot expansions, why did it HAVE to be koroks again? the fact that hestu doesnt even acknowledge that this entire process of collecting the seeds has literally already been done before is so bizarre, especially considering this problem repeats with the armor and compendium. while there are other examples of this, those are the main 3 on my mind having zero motivation to engage with that huge chunk of content has certainly hurt my enjoyment of exploring the world and playing the game in general, and i see myself coming back to the game later this year to finish exploring the new content to totk (depths, side adventures, etc) and then putting the game down until the inevitable dlc. im already taking a bit of a break now that i’ve finished the story — which is great btw — before i finish off all the shrines, which i did not expect to happen this soon to be clear though, this game is a masterpiece. those unchanged systems are identical to botw, so if botw is a 10/10, totk sure as hell is too considering how above and beyond it goes in every single other area. that still doesnt change that it’s not the absolute time black hole the first game was for me though, as the major completionist and collector i am just doesnt appreciate those copied systems here. i do, however have immense appreciation for everything else this game added, but by scrolling through reviews on here i know that’s been talked to death already, so i’ll leave this here