The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

What’s The Game? The second fully open-world Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom

How Much Did You Know About It Before Playing? A fair amount, this time out. I played through (though for reasons I’m not exactly sure about, didn’t write up) Breath of the Wild. I loved Breath of the Wild. It’s a fantastic game which I thoroughly enjoyed taking my time to explore so I was very much looking forward to playing the direct sequel. I have also watched my partner play through Tears of the Kingdom (well, most of it – he didn’t quite finish it) from A Time Before I Played Zelda when I didn’t especially know what was going on but nevertheless enjoyed seeing him play. So I was pretty clued up on what to expect going into this one.

How Was The Experience? I know there was a lot of hype around Tears of the Kingdom when it was released and, although I wasn’t playing games back then, I was aware of the release simply through cultural osmosis – it was pretty hard to avoid. But all the noise that surrounded the original release has faded away now and though I was familiar enough with how the game was regarded, I was still coming to it as a neophyte. I had seen my other half play through chunks of it, I knew the game’s reception, and I had at least a little Zelda experience under my belt. Could the game possibly live up to the hype?

Yes. Yes, it could. Tears of the Kingdom is simply breathtaking, and in a way that I wasn’t quite prepared for. The scope is phenomenal, for one, with a simply insane amount of stuff to explore, discover, and experience. There have been some complaints that Tears of the Kingdom is too big – that there’s so much material to get through that it simply becomes repetitive but that’s not my experience at all. In fact, if anything I wanted more. By the time I had come to the end of the game and defeated Ganondorf, I still hadn’t quite managed to find everything on the surface and about a third of the Depths were still unexplored. Even then, it was mostly the launch of the Switch 2 that finally prompted me to just polish this game off so I’d be clear for Wind Waker. But I still wanted more. I loved wandering around in this world, just finding new little places to discover, even when it was another Bokoblin camp or awkwardly-placed cave entrance. I could wander around this version of Hyrule forever.

There’s also something rather… forlorn about this version of Hyrule. This isn’t a game where Link is fighting to stop the fall of the world, the fall, in this game, has already happened. The landscape is littered with ruins, Gloom consumes the depths and spills onto the surface in places, great ancient statues lie fallen and broken. Yes, the battle is to stop Ganondorf from taking over but even so, Hyrule has already fallen. That was true in Breath of the Wild too but because Tears of the Kingdom has a more expanded scope than Breath of the Wild it feels more tangible – a sense of loss and hopelessness, even as the denizens of this world try to get on with whatever life they have left. Ruins fall from the sky, lost technology is inscrutable and scattered, this world is clearly past its prime. There are plenty of places where levity still flourishes – the cheerful obliviousness of the Goron, stables where Link can rest, find recipes, or help solve side-quests for the local newspaper – still, overall, the feel of this Hyrule is more wistful, lost, and regretful than any thus far.

The Depths play an unexpected part in this because, although they’re not in truth the most exciting part of the game to explore (more on that later) there’s still something undeniably sad about them. This unwelcoming place that Link plummets into, accompanied by a mournful horn, leads to darkness, abandoned mines, desolate landscapes and – in both a literal and metaphorical sense – gloom. There’s no levity or break from the bleakness here – just more pockets of shadow and decay. Returning to the surface, escaping the oppressive, murky underworld, almost feels like coming up for air and there’s a palpable sense of relief as Link emerges into a warmer, less desolate region and any hearts lost to Gloom slowly start to recover.

The atmosphere is something that is much more thoroughly developed here than in Breath of the Wild and it gives Tears of the Kingdom an added dimension. Which, with both the Depths and the Sky Islands, is also literally the case as well. In addition to the surface and underground, Link can now explore the sky too, not just gliding through it but landing on mysterious, anchored lumps of rock in the sky. The Depths and the Sky Islands are interesting, in fact, if a little imperfect. Because though they are great additions, there’s a slight sense that neither is entirely fleshed out in the same way that the surface of Hyrule is. They’re great, but they could be a bit more.

And while it makes sense that the ground is where the bulk of the action should be, there’s a slight sense of lack in both the Depths and the Sky Islands. They’re both fun to explore initially but once you get past the novelty, there’s a degree of repetition to them. The Sky Islands probably fare a little better here – it’s a lot of fun gliding between them (or indeed working out how to get between them), discovering shrines, Constructs, and whatnot. Different types of islands, from scattered archipelagos to floating stone spheres, help give a sense of variety. And by invoking three dimensions, there’s an added challenge often of how to even reach a particular island, never mind what you might find when you get there. Whereas a lot of the Depths involves either desperately searching for a Light Root or flinging a Brightbloom seed, running on a bit, flinging another, running on a bit… It can get a bit repetitive. The Depths mainly contribute atmosphere, the Sky Islands a fun novelty, but you’d be hard-pressed to call either of them essential, even as they continue to expand what Tears of the Kingdom can do.

But they do add plenty more space to explore and that’s one of the joys of Tears of the Kingdom. The scope and scale of what Link has to explore is unmatched in any Zelda game and that means you need to commit to the idea of really going all out and investigating. It’s positively therapeutic, exploring Hyrule’s different regions, and there are more than enough different environments both within a specific region and to the regions themselves to keep things interesting. They’re not – as far as the surface is concerned – any different from Breath of the Wild, so Akkala, Lanayru, and all the other regions are just where they were in the previous game. That could feel a bit repetitive too but it never actually does. It’s just fun taking Link on his journey through the landscape and it’s not like there’s a shortage of things to do. Quite the reverse, in fact.

As with Breath of the Wild, there aren’t really traditional Zelda dungeons here. There sort of are, with the Lightning Temple, the Wind Temple and so on which gesture in that direction, but they’re pretty small compared to previous outings and they don’t quite scratch the same itch for puzzle-solving. Breath of the Wild had the Divine Beasts, which were a little closer to traditional Zelda dungeons, but were also relatively small, if a little more complex. Here, each Temple has, as you would expect, a Big Bad at the end of it and a few puzzles to get there but they’re a little slight. Instead, and again as with Breath of the Wild, we have shrines, 152 of which are scattered around different parts of Hyrule. These mostly contain puzzles of one sort or another, though a few of them are combat shrines, training shrines, or shrines where you have to locate a large green crystal and take it to the shrine. The puzzle shrines are mostly good fun and definitely present challenges but they’re relatively short and not quite a direct replacement for full-on dungeons. And there’s always something faintly disappointing about getting a crystal shrine, even though some of them can be fiendishly put together to make the act of getting the crystal back something you really have to work at.

This shift of emphasis away from traditional dungeons towards shrines has an unexpected effect on the atmosphere of the game. While the Temples that need to be completed are absorbing enough for what they are, the shrines, being briefer, lend a different atmosphere. Because oftentimes in a Zelda game, what matters is the dungeons and everything in between is just connective tissue to get you from one dungeon to another. It can be fun, or well done, but it’s rarely essential. But here, what happens between the shrines (and Temples) is just as important, if not more, important than the puzzle-solving itself. It’s a different emphasis but it makes the game feel remarkably fresh, even following on from the same format as Breath of the Wild. The rhythm and tempo of the game are different and that leans into the forlorn, lost feel that this version of Hyrule has. While it’s entirely understandable that long-term fans will mourn the absence of traditional dungeons, for those of us less inured in the intricacies of the series the shift of emphasis is a bracing reminder of how the format and formula of a Zelda game can be stretched.

Even the caves here, another innovation unique to this game, add depth and give another environment for Link to explore. Some contain shrines, some more monsters to kill, some a nice new outfit for Link to try on, but whatever you find, you’re doing it in an environment that feels dark, dank, and convincing. A few of them are in pitch-darkness, in fact, requiring Brightbloom seeds to light your way, others exist as a simple puzzle to be solved, but they’re almost always worth exploring. And the range of outfits Link can discover here is genuinely impressive and not simply cosmetic. Link has a vast amount of clothing, armour, and masks to collect in this game, all upgradable via Fairy Fountains for extra protection (and you’re going to need it for the final battle). Some of these are familiar to stalwarts of the series – though how badly do you really want to dress up as Tingle? – others are specific to this game but they’re all fun to try on, just to vary Link’s look even when some of them are distinctly less useful than others.

And what of Link himself? Well, despite being asleep for a hundred years and losing one of his arms at the start of the game, he’s pretty much the same model Breath of the Wild gave us. But that missing arm, or rather its replacement, is the secret that makes Tears of the Kingdom absolutely sing. Because Ultrahand is an absolute triumph and the ability to manipulate objects with it gives so many different dynamics to puzzles, the environment, and what you can achieve with Link. It is at the same time both a breathtakingly simple conceit and the absolute key to why this game works so well. It’s everything you could want from a new mechanic – so simple you wonder why nobody ever came up with it before and yet with so much scope it opens up whole new ways of putting challenges together. You gain the ability very early on in the game, on the first of the Sky Islands, and once you have it, you’ll marvel that a game like this could ever have existed without it.

Fuse, too, gives a vast amount of additional range to what you can do. Fusing some objects, like precious stones, to things like weapons and shields can enhance their power, while others allow you to create objects from virtually anything, from a stick-on-a-stick to a hovercraft. Another of Tears of the Kingdom‘s innovations is the introduction of Zonai devices – technology left over from the long-lost Zonai which now lies strewn across Hyrule. These devices can be used in any number of ways, from portable pots that let Link cook food anywhere, to rockets and fans that can be used to help him get around or attack enemies. How you use Zonai devices is entirely up to you – fuse a rocket to a Korok and send them flying if you want, or build yourself a go-kart or… well, anything. The range of what you can do is only limited by your imagination and it’s another aspect that makes the game incredibly addictive and incredibly immersive.

Of course, all these abilities (alongside Recall, Ascend and Autobuild, replacing Breath of the Wild‘s abilities) go hand in hand with a genuinely impressive physics engine. One of the reasons the game becomes so immersive is that everything behaves the way one instinctively feels it ought to, rather than feeling like a pre-programmed computer game. Chuck a boulder off a cliff and it bounces down in a way that just feels instinctively right. Some of the heights – whether on the Sky Islands or simply walking (carefully) across a precarious rope bridge – are genuinely vertiginous and a perfect sense of perspective accompanies the physics engine. Jumping off them sees Link fall in a way that you can’t help but get drawn into. Even when he speed-dives, there’s a rightness to the way he interacts with the world that makes it very easy to invest and believe in what’s happening around you. That’s true whether it’s something tied to the real world, like an object falling, or watching massive dragons lazily waft and paw their way through the air. Everything feels like an interconnected whole and the physics of Hyrule plays a huge part in that.

The graphics style helps with that too. It is of course – and I’m sorry to keep referring back but there we go – massively indebted to Breath of the Wild, with many of the same character designs, layouts, and effects, like that rather glorious one whenever Link teleports to a Shrine. But there have been some clear refinements here too – when Link lands in water we get a satisfying plume of drops that were absent in this game’s predecessor and better sound effects too. Some of the shots of Hyrule from the Sky Islands look positively beautiful, again a clear progression, and overall the heights, surface, and depths of the world look wholly convincing. There have been some reports that, due to the age of the Switch when Tears of the Kingdom was released, frame rate drop is an issue with the game and I’d be lying if I said I never experienced this. But equally, it happens so infrequently that I was barely ever aware of it and since I’m not a professional gamer, speedrunner or the like, it had essentially no impact on my enjoyment of the game at all. For the most part, this runs smoothly and effortlessly. Loading times, too, have been criticised as not being an improvement on Breath of the Wild but since there’s more to Tears of the Kingdom maybe that’s not a big surprise. In any event, loading times didn’t impact my enjoyment of the game one iota.

This would all be terribly abstract were the game not so much fun. Whether you’re battling endless hoards of monsters, solving shrines, unearthing Koroks, completing the bajillion side-quests, or simply wandering about interacting with the characters, there’s just so much pleasure to be had from Tears of the Kingdom. The titular tears themselves, found in ancient geoglyphs, tell the story of Zelda being cast back in time to meet the original founders of Hyrule, then sacrificing herself to reach Link thousands of years later. The cut scenes, which also chart Ganondorf’s rise to power and his greed and desperation to acquire the secret stones of power, are expertly animated and it’s very easy to get drawn into while watching them, to the point that it’s almost a shame when they end. You wouldn’t necessarily want a whole movie to look like this but if it did, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world – they are genuinely engrossing, and in a way that Zelda herself is often not given much of a chance to be (Echoes of Wisdom aside, naturally). Here, she feels like a fully rounded character, willing to make hard choices and difficult sacrifices to help Link, far away from the traditional role of a peril monkey in need of rescue that she’s often occupied. Her reuniting with Link, along with the other sages, at the very end of the game actually feels earned and carries some real emotional weight.

Link’s still a dork though. And that’s why we love him. He can be shocked by incredibly silly things, he can still do goofy poses for pictures, he can do double-takes, and plenty more – all the things that make him such an appealing character and such an easy one to invest in. Link remains mute as always – well, we see him clearly talking to NPCs in the game but as usual he never actually utters a sound that isn’t a grunt, groan, or exclamation. This still feels like an approach that works for the character – not just, as is commonly explained, because it makes him easy to project on to but it also makes him stand out from all the other characters he interacts with. The voice acting in Tears of the Kingdom is generally good but by keeping Link silent it also keeps him at a certain remove. Given his position as being on a singular quest as the one person who can stop Ganondorf, this feels appropriate. Even when he acquires secret stones and has sages to fight alongside him, he’s still the one carrying the burden of what needs to be done, so his status as a silent outsider works. His combat abilities remain familiar and, as with Breath of the Wild, he still has to put up with weapons durability issues, and he fights as well as he always has. Brave and resilient, that’s our Link. But, as mentioned, he’s still a terrific dork. It’s such an incredibly appealing combination and Link is a complete success.

There’s an excellent range of characters for him to interact with too. Some are of more significance than others, of course, but all add to the flavour of the game and help build the impression that this is a fully realised world with people, lives, and desires that go on even when Link isn’t around – the whole world expands beyond the four walls of the console. Side-quests add to this and there’s certainly no shortage of them – all the quests Link undertakes intersect the people he meets and again gives the feeling that they have their own agendas and interests. Some of these are incredibly silly, like Link’s Adventures In The World of Fashion, and some are far more relevant to the main plot, like exploring ruins around Hyrule, but they all involve Link getting to know and understand the people he meets. For NPCs, they’re remarkably easy to believe in.

One of the other ways that Tears of the Kingdom scores over Breath of the Wild is in the final battle. Breath of the Wild was a fantastic ride to get to the final battle with Ganondorf but the actual battle itself was slightly underwhelming. He wasn’t that hard to beat and throwing in a little extra “ride around this monster on a horse for a bit” afterwards didn’t really help things much. In Tears of the Kingdom, the final battle is far more satisfying. Before reaching Ganondorf himself, Link and the sages have the chance to meaningfully fight together, taking down wave after wave of Ganondorf’s army before Link finally ventures, alone, to face the man himself. And the fight with Ganondorf is genuinely hard – if you haven’t stocked up on weapons, food, and anything to restore broken hearts then you’re in real trouble because you can’t just teleport away, you’re locked in. That sense of being enclosed in the final battle helps ramp up the tension substantially and though defeating Ganondorf is possible, it’s a huge challenge that even the best-equipped Link is going to struggle with. But that also means that when the victory arrives, there’s a real sense of accomplishment and completion.

Yet defeating Ganondorf under the Gloom-infested ruins of Hyrule castle isn’t the end of the story, as everyone’s favourite Bad Bad Muscle Daddy transforms into a dragon that then also has to be defeated high in the skies above the distant landscape below. This, too, is a tough battle, albeit a little easier than the first, as Zelda-as-a-dragon nips along to lend a helping hand. This adds to the sense that it has taken both Link and Zelda to defeat Gandondorf’s evil this time out, even though in reality it has of course been mostly you controlling Link. But it gives a certain elegiac quality to the final battle before Link and his sages finally meet the restored Zelda at the game’s end. And that’s the other thing that works incredibly well here – when Breath of the Wild ended it was… satisfying but a bit abrupt, maybe. Tears of the Kingdom corrects this, giving time and space for the story to properly end, for Link and Zelda to be reunited, and for the story to actually conclude rather than simply stop. That makes the whole conclusion of the game feel like a satisfying resolution to dozens (alright, hundreds) of hours of adventuring. This victory feels earned.

And it’s that sense of everything being earned that makes Tears of the Kingdom such a compelling game. All the victories that come to Link, big or small, feel like things you have had to work at to achieve. Sometimes they’re simple things, like finding an item or combining food to make new recipes, other times they’re major plot points or complex side-quests. But all of them require a degree of effort and the progress Link makes through the game really adds up to something. Sure, it’s not the dungeons of yore but you’re still achieving plenty and there’s more than enough sense of progress to ensure your interest never wanes and the final battle feels like something that’s really been built to, rather than the last thing you need to do in a series of predetermined steps.

So how was the experience? Well, “unparalleled” would be a fair description. I’ve simply never played a game that sucked me in as much as Tears of the Kingdom did. It’s a game I missed when I wasn’t playing it and it’s a game I miss now that I’ve completed it. And it’s unquestionably one I’ll return to in future, especially now the shiny Switch 2 version has a bunch of graphics improvements. The scope of Tears of the Kingdom is breathtaking, the mechanics pretty much flawless, the design unmatched, and the experience almost completely unique, at least to this relatively inexperienced gamer. I loved Breath of the Wild. But I love Tears of the Kingdom. It’s an astonishing achievement and one that not only demands my attention by compels it. As you may gather, I just absolutely adore this game. I bloody love it!

Scores on the Doors? 9.5/10