The Legend of Zelda™: Tears of the Kingdom

I went into Tears of the Kingdom expecting a comfortable retread of Breath of the Wild's greatest hits. What I got instead was a game that quietly dismantles the way you think about open-world problem-solving, then hands you the wreckage and says: build something. The shift is subtle at first, you're back in a familiar Hyrule, same rolling hills, same cooking pots, but once the four core abilities click, the whole experience tilts into something genuinely new. The abilities are the engine here. Ultrahand lets you glue Zonai devices, fans, wheels, rockets, flame emitters, into any contraption you can imagine, from rickety rafts to airborne war machines. Fuse attaches materials to weapons, extending their life and changing how they behave. Ascend punches Link straight up through ceilings and cliff faces, turning every overhanging surface into a shortcut. Recall rewinds the physics state of any object, so a falling boulder becomes a lift. The game then stacks these four tools across three distinct vertical layers: sky islands floating above Hyrule, the familiar surface, and a pitch-black underground called the Depths where an affliction named Gloom erodes heart containers in a way food cannot fix. That last layer is a genuine pressure system, dark, resource-hungry, and uncomfortable in exactly the right way. The fair criticism is that the sheer volume of content can work against the game. The feeling of having too much to do, too many systems demanding attention at once, is real. The Temples, Nintendo's answer to the Divine Beasts from the predecessor, are more memorable on the journey in than they are to actually complete, a pattern several reviewers noticed. Weapon durability from Breath of the Wild returns unchanged, and Fusing can actually make the loss sting more, not less, because you get attached to specific combinations. Players who bounced off the original's systems will not find a smoother on-ramp here. For the right player, though, none of that lands as a dealbreaker. This is a game that scores highest when you stop following quest markers and start asking dumb questions like "can I build a hot air balloon out of a Korok Leaf and a campfire?" (You can.) The Temples may underwhelm, but the paths leading to them, sky archipelagos, massive waterfalls, underground Lightroots, routinely deliver the kind of environmental storytelling that feels effortless. Critics rated it among the best-reviewed releases of 2023, and player reception, while slightly more divided on user aggregates, skewed heavily positive. The minority complaint about recycled geography and thin story has merit but misreads what the game actually is: a physics sandbox draped in adventure dressing, not a narrative RPG. If you finished Breath of the Wild and felt like the building blocks were there for something bigger, Tears of the Kingdom is that something bigger. If you want tight dungeons, a strong narrative throughline, or a clean weapon inventory, you will spend a meaningful chunk of time being annoyed. Know which camp you're in before you start.

Alex · Scout Team

Catch-all

Be the first to comment on The Legend of Zelda™: Tears of the Kingdom.