Nintendo’s Latest Entry to the Legend of Zelda Series is a Masterpiece
You read that correctly; The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece. Nintendo basically took everything good about its prequel - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and, well, made it better. While there are still a few things that I believe Breath of the Wild did better, those few things can’t be compared to the multitude of things that Tears of the Kingdom either added or improved upon. It is still worth playing BotW before starting TotK, since that game is still a masterpiece and TotK takes place after it.
This review will not spoil anything regarding the story and major new content in Tears of the Kingdom, but will contain some spoilers for Breath of the Wild. So if you haven’t already played Breath of the Wild and want to play it fresh, I strongly encourage you to finish that game before reading this review. With all that being said, here’s my review for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
TotK builds upon Breath of the Wild’s large map, adding many new features. There’s far more to explore, new enemies to fight against, and nearly endless new methods to traverse this massive map and defend against these enemies. This game brings back the sky islands from Skyward Sword, and scatters them above Hyrule.
Since there are no loading zones or boundaries from the sky to the surface, you can ascend or descend to and from the sky islands in any way you wish. This isn’t the only way Hyrule has grown, but I won’t delve further into this (so you can see for yourself).
No loading.
This world is huge.
Tears of the Kingdom also utilises the Nintendo Switch’s more powerful hardware (whereas Breath of the Wild was made for the Wii U), allowing for better visuals and far more overall potential in terms of how much you’ll be able to do in this world. BotW has always been a stunning game, but TotK overhauls that with increased draw distance, better texture work, and improved lighting.
TotK plays at a dynamic resolution, reaching a maximum of around 900p in docked mode and 720p in handheld (while rarely reaching as low as 720p when docked and maybe 576p when portable). For a comparison, BotW plays at a locked 900p. Similarly to Breath, Tears runs at a capped 30 fps, with barely any dips. Neither of these drawbacks ever bothered me, and they shouldn’t bother you either.
In this new sequel, Link has been provided with a brand new set of abilities, most of which revolve around the player’s own imagination. People all over social media have done incredible things with these abilities, and there are nearly no limits to what you can do in this game. For instance, there’s an ability called Ultrahand, which allows you to grab any non-living and non-environmental object, (say goodbye to the limits that Magnesis had) and lets you stick them together.
You can also find many devices scattered around the world, and may may use them in your building to invent new vehicles, superweapons, mechs, and more. The only limit this game has is your own imagination. Since this game is very physics-based, you may also encounter various trials and errors while building to your heart’s content. Including this ability, there are plenty more creative new abilities, and I encourage you to experiment with all of them.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece. It makes Breath of the Wild look like a beta test, completely overhauling basically everything. There are still multiple things that I believe that Breath of the Wild did better than Tears of the Kingdom (which weren’t stated due to spoiler reasons), but I still think that Tears of the Kingdom deserves a gargantuan score of 97/100. It isn’t a perfect game, but it is definitely one of my favourites - if not my absolute favourite, and I believe that it is worth every dollar spent.