Impressions: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Before I begin, here are my stats for the game thus far.

• 105+ hours in

• 11 hearts

• 2 3/5 Stamina

• 112 korok seeds

• 4 Light Blessings (I always keep a “level up” on deck in case I need it)

So far, I have seven towers activated. I have more of the underground map uncovered than the surface! I’m having a great time exploring each and every province thoroughly before moving on to the next one. Side quests and NPCs do their best to send you in different directions of the map at the very beginning of the game - and it is very easy to get distracted in this game.

This is my default armor set at the moment:

Current armor kit: Fierce Deity Mask + Barbarian Armor + Fierce Deity

I found the full Fierce Diety set but use the Barbarian Armor due to being a higher level (it’s a lot less expensive to level up than the Fierce Deity Armor (which is only level one). I haven’t been to Hateno yet, but I’m considering going over to that part of the map soon so I can dye the set. This level three attack buff has been handy - you need every advantage in this game. Enemies do not fight fair!

I had to seek out a second Great Fairy after awhile because higher level enemies started appearing all over the place. The first Frox I ever saw was an Obsidian one. At least now I’m getting two-shotted instead of one-shotted in the game by silver Bokos and Moblins with good weapons equipped if I happen to get hit.

My current surface map… showing my icon abuse!

My current underground map

I am REALLY enjoying my current focus on side quests and side adventures. I love this new side adventure category by the way - the simple fetch quests are the side quests and the side adventures are more involved and tie into the overall story a bit more; making the world building the most intentional in a Zelda game yet).

I play the game in certain cycles - when I’m not focusing on side quests/side adventures, I am either focusing on grinding shrines, exploring the map to reach each area, or going back through caves to find the bubblegems I missed.

Having two world maps + the sky and adding sandbox elements really has me considering whether this will have a shot at catching BoTW in sales when all is said and done. I also expect a 4k/60fps port for the next Switch, which will help the game a lot. But then, BoTW has gotten a shot in the arm and is charting higher since TotK released. I’m personally saving Master Mode (if/when it becomes available) for an inevitable bump in image quality and fps for my second playthrough on the Switch Next.

It will probably be another 100 hours before I’m satisfied enough with all I’ve done and beat the game. I still have two dungeons left to do, and I do the geoglyph quest as I get to them - I have been totally ignoring the main story for the last 40 to 50 hours of playtime!

With Tears of the Kingdom, it’s as if the devs basically said: ‘Break the game. Have at it. Do whatever you want.’ Nintendo saw all those shenanigans in Breath of the Wild and just gave gamers the tools (i.e. Zonai tech) to completely “break” the game. It’s pretty brilliant how the design allows for multiple solutions to puzzles (you have complete freedom to totally cheese shrine puzzles too). It really is a miracle that the game runs as well as it does with these crazy, gamebreaking powers they gave Link. Imagine bug testing this game? Aonuma did say they delayed the game to make sure it was up to Nintendo standards.

More random thoughts on the game:

• I love the new shrine music - the OST is pretty awesome in general!

• I find myself spending a lot of time pondering if I should pick up a weapon or not due to fusing. Always weighing different fuse combinations!

• I stopped fusing weapons to each other for the most part because it looks dumb in most cases. And I refuse to have my Link running around with something silly on his shield, so I usually only fuse shields to shields (with the exception of rockets!) and monster horns to weapons - this looks so much cooler (they actually created a model for the weapons fused monster parts). Really gives me Monster Hunter vibes.

• The seamlessness of the world is IMPRESSIVE. It’s very impressive to skydive from a high Sky Island all the way down a chasm to the Depths.

• From a coding perspective, this is just wizardry on the Switch - there’s so much going on under the hood and the poor Switch is holding up as best it can.

• I miss bombs and I really, really miss Revali’s Gale, but I love the new way you have to interact with the world with your new powers. But bomb flowers returning are cool and rocket shields are great (even if they eat up shield durability).

• Like Breath of the Wild, you have everything you need to solve every puzzle in the shrines from the very beginning of the game. If you cannot figure out how the solve a puzzle - it really is on YOU. And I love that!

• The surface is way more interesting this time around. The more I play, the more difference I see on the surface - and with each region having it’s own issues, the cave system, wells (!), and distractions around every corner.

• I love the enemy AI - it does not fight fair and I really like that! The enemies encircle you and jump you. This is not Ocarina of TIme where enemies who aren’t Z-targeted will not attack Link, in this game, they all attack you at once! Use every advantage!

• The Sky Islands are fun and give a very different experience - the islands aren’t very expansive and that creates a fun challenge of figuring out how to get to many of them.

This is a gorgeous game.

I really don’t know how Nintendo keeps doing it… I am taking my time with this and savoring it! It will be another several years before the next mainline Zelda comes along.