My Full Thoughts On The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

​I’ve done a few deeper dives into games on my blog over the years including Xenoblade X, Magia Record, and Xenoblade 3. After 110+ hours of gameplay, I recently finished The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and I find myself very eager to discuss it at length. I’m not going to shy away from spoilers, which would be hard especially given how muted the prerelease information was, so if you haven’t finished your own journey with Zelda, I encourage you to return to this blog later. To structure this blog, I’ll first discuss my concerns in the lead up to Tears of the Kingdom and then I’ll dip in and out of topics as I follow my own journey through the game. Tears of the Kingdom is an absolutely massive game that offers tons of freedom for how you can approach it. Everyone’s experiences are going to be wildly different as a result which I find fascinating.

When Tears of the Kingdom was first announced, my main concern rested with the reuse of the same Hyrule we explored in Breath of the Wild. There are plenty of games I really enjoy that feature reused maps such as the Trails games and the Yakuza games, while there are other games I really don’t. One game that featured a reused map that negatively impacted my enjoyment was The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds which reused the overworld of A Link To The Past one of my absolute favorite games ever made. Prior to A Link Between Worlds ever existing, I always wondered what it would be like to return to A Link To The Past’s world and expand the map outward. When you climb Death Mountain for example, you can see the land beyond Hyrule. A hypothetical sequel could have possibly featured a new path in the forest nearby Death Mountain to lead to these unexplored lands. Instead, what we got with A Link Between Worlds was just a very lightly remixed version of A Link To The Past with even the new dungeons often playing around with similar themes. While I’ve replayed A Link To The Past countless times, I’ve been relatively down on A Link Between Worlds compared to other Zelda games that I haven’t had much desire to revisit it at all. I’ve come to realize, I’m generally fine with map reuse when I feel there are still surprises to be discovered whether that’s new characters, big story moments, and/or proper new adventures. In the absence of info, I started pinning my hopes towards the original map size, the potential of the sky islands, and my dreams for underground content for Zelda TK. 

I had two other major questions/concerns walking into Tears of the Kingdom, specifically dungeon gameplay and a last minute concern regarding construction and vehicles. While I really liked the shrines in Breath of the Wild, which often offered a few quick puzzles and challenges to solve, the full dungeon equivalent of the Divine Beasts left me wanting as the spaces felt too small and the challenges within, both combat and puzzle solving, felt too simple and disconnected from each other. The elemental and animal dungeon themes blurred together thanks to all four sharing materials and design elements. Far more successful was Hyrule Castle, a dungeon you could amazingly approach from any angle and engage with as much or as little as you wanted as well as the motorcycle themed DLC dungeon which suggested the Zelda team still had excellent dungeon design in them. As for my other concern, while I thoroughly enjoyed Breath of the Wild’s physics systems, I was concerned in the February 2023 trailer there seemed to be an expanded focus on constructing and vehicles. I’ve to this day never connected with Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts since the controls always felt too clunky so I was worried about Zelda seemingly evoking that game and shifting away from actions the player could do directly into something more indirect.

I’m eager to get into discussing the final game, so I’ll start from the top. The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is the direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, my 2017 Game of the Year. The game starts in a fuzzy, few years gap following BOTW that sees Link and Zelda investigating deep below the depths of Hyrule Castle to find the source of the Gloom emanating from it. Coming into contact with Gloom makes people sick and during gameplay can disable some of Link’s heart containers unless properly treated. Link and Zelda ultimately discover the mummified corpse of the most prominent Zelda villain, Ganondorf, breaking the seal placed on him. Amidst the chaos that ensues, Link’s Master Sword is broken, his arm is severely wounded, and finally, while falling down a chasm, Zelda is seemingly teleported away. The game shifts to an extended tutorial on the Great Sky Islands where Link wakes up with a new magical right arm inherited from Rauru, the first King of Hyrule. TK’s tutorial is somewhat disappointingly more structured than the Great Plateau of BOTW and oddly sets high expectations for the rest of the sky islands that goes unfulfilled. It introduces key concepts you’ll need to survive one by one like hunting, cooking, and managing extreme temperatures, as well as Link’s new arm abilities and ancient Zonai devices. Link’s abilities from the last game are all gone now and are replaced with Ultrahand (which lets you grab and glue things together), Fuse (which lets you combine items with your equipment), Ascend (which lets you fly through most ceilings), and Recall (which lets you rewind time on objects only). There are lore reasons for both of these, but as a result of this ability reshuffling, bombs are now harvested from Bomb Flowers and are most often used by being attached to arrows, and, to encourage Fuse use, all weapons have been rusted out and have miserable durability and damage until they have been Fused with an item. As for Zonai devices, you’ll frequently use these with Ultrahand in construction and puzzle solving. These frequently resemble real things in our world like fans, rockets, and fire hydrants, but there are unique items too like the stabilizer that helps objects stand up straight.

Once you have completed the Great Sky Island tutorial, Zelda TK finally allows you to dive down to the surface which is when the game is astoundingly, fully open to tackle however you like. While you are gently pointed towards the newly established Lookout Landing just outside Hyrule Castle, which I knew from my Breath of the Wild experience must contain the paraglider (an incredibly valuable exploration tool), it is possible to march straight to Ganondorf if you know where he is waiting or even do the rest of the main quest before it is ever given to you. If you discover parts of the main quest earlier than intended, the quest chain and dialogue will account for that which is very cool. What is most interesting about this approach, where nothing is required or strictly pointed towards, is that for better and for worse it is entirely possible to miss out on entire systems, abilities, equipment, and story elements or discover these things later or even earlier than is perhaps ideal. For another immediate great example of this, when you first land on the surface, Hestu, a big Korok who dances for you to expand your weapons, shields, and bow inventories when you give him Korok Seeds is apparently nearby, but I never saw him at all. For at least 20 some hours then, I had no idea how to expand my inventory which is a very useful thing to be able to do! The tradeoff of course is that when I did finally encounter him it was such a big moment in my greater journey. While I was generally fine with the rest of the systems, items, and abilities you can miss for hours (stuff like the Master Sword and Phantom Abilities make for great rewards), both Hestu and armor upgrading via the Great Fairies are the two systems I wish were available in a more straightforward way.

Let’s talk next about Lookout Landing which I consider the definitive location of Tears of the Kingdom. Outside of a very cool temporary Gerudo town, Lookout Landing is the only new town in Zelda TK (which is disappointing!) and it evolves over the course of the main quest. You begin by reuniting with Purah from Breath of the Wild who ultimately gives you a new paraglider and regularly gives you new main quests to pursue and a little extra direction to other areas of interest like Lurelin Village and the Depths. There are a few shops and facilities available at Lookout Landing including a very handy fast travel point, a free bed (which is incredibly useful since the game is most difficult at the start), an armor shop, a kitchen, and a goddess statue (used to upgrade your health, stamina, and later on your phantom sages). As your adventure progresses, new characters arrive at Lookout Landing and more facilities and services become available like Hestu, a stable, and a bargainer statue. I was especially happy to discover a very elaborate tunnel network even eventually opens in the emergency shelter below which is very satisfying to explore. There is unfortunately a static feeling to Lookout Landing as well. Perhaps I missed quests that would fix these issues, but I never figured out a way to get the cook to return to Lookout Landing and while you do gather a diverse force at Lookout Landing it never really feels like they accomplish anything.

Before I explain my immediate goals on leaving Lookout Landing, I should briefly mention here if you are unfamiliar with the final game, Tears of the Kingdom did opt to expand the world of Breath of the Wild, but interestingly it does so vertically both up to the skies above with the newly arrived sky islands and below into the newly revealed Depths rather than horizontally anywhere on the surface. The original surface map does however get a substantial number of new caves and wells to explore some of which are quite complex. To be clear on this, the three layers of the world are directly layered on top of each other seamlessly. It’s possible to jump off a sky island and directly descend down to the surface and through a giant hole in the ground to enter the Depths and there are even a few cases where you do this to complete challenges and solve puzzles.

Upon leaving Lookout Landing with my paraglider my immediate goals were to check out the Depths for the first time and then activate every tower so I could see the full topography of the map. As I just mentioned, you can enter The Depths by jumping down freshly opened up chasms in the earth. Thankfully there’s one just outside Lookout Landing so you can get your first taste of it immediately. While prior to launch the Depths were a complete secret, I had expected there to be a substantial underground component to Tears of the Kingdom based off the very first trailer. I thus had expectations and an image in mind for what the underground zone walking in should be. I’ll discuss this in full later, but sadly I walked away with mixed feelings overall. When you first descend into the Depths, you’ll immediately notice it is pitch-black outside of a few glowing orange plants. These are called Lightroots and upon walking up and activating one the area around it will be illuminated and it becomes active as a fast travel destination. In the same way I wanted to claim all of the towers immediately to get all of the surface and sky map data, I knew immediately upon claiming my first Lightroot I’d want to light up the entirety of the Depths before my game was over.

While I activated a few Lightroots immediately, I quickly left and turned my attention back to claiming all of the towers. This meant I was interacting with the surface map I was well familiar with from Breath of the Wild. While I didn’t know the extent of it just yet, my frequent, singular focus toward objectives would come to define my experience interacting with the surface map in Zelda TK. While Breath of the Wild’s map was large and offered tons of room to explore, I remembered so much of the broad strokes from my 65+ hours I spent with BOTW and its DLC. I thus largely knew then what areas of the maps were immediately changed and also had a good sense of where they would place items and areas of interest like shrines and caves which often made large swaths of the map feel less valuable. Yet, when I did relax and take in the world I was in, I was regularly reminded why I was so won over by Breath of the Wild originally as some of the areas are just so amazingly realized and wondrous. Zelda TK generally looks a smidge better than BOTW and its performance being more consistent makes the world feel even more solid.

​Since I keep bringing them up, now is a good time to talk about caves. The original Breath of the Wild had a few caves, but Zelda TK has a significant number of them cutting into and twisting around the earth. Caves are often filled with materials including gems that are mainly used to make money, but also have use in crafting and weapon fusion. Caves can feature bosses and enemy gauntlets to fight as well as shrines and armor to discover. While they tend to blur together in appearance as a majority of them are normal caves and wet caves that have hard to climb, slick surfaces, there is enough variation to keep them interesting including lava, ice, desert, and even a few dungeon-like caves. What really sticks out about caves are how complex they often are in terms of their layouts. They often twist around themselves in engaging and satisfying ways that make them a joy to explore and some even feature mine cart tracks to ride, rivers of water, ice, sand, and lava to navigate, and environmental puzzles to solve. As far as brand new spaces in Zelda TK go, caves are my favorite overall because you never know just what you are in for whenever you enter one.

Let’s talk about towers next. There’s 15 of them and some are tricky to reach, others have enemies guarding them, and a few have a small quest or puzzle involved in order to activate them. I have two favorites I definitely want to talk about. One of them is first surrounded by thorny vines and while your instinct is to light the vines on fire, this particular area of the map has nearly constant rainfall. At first, I moved on hoping either the rain would break or I’d learn of a way to break the rain, but on my return trip it was still a constant downpour. This turned out to be one my favorite puzzles in my adventure as the solution I came up with was to build a wooden roof over the thorns near the door. Now that they were out of the rain they could be properly lit on fire and I could activate the tower. Another very cool tower had me entering a cave below and riding a raft across a swift moving river so I could use Ascend and enter the tower from below. Incidentally, this was a recurring and very fun use for Ascend where you knew of locked buildings on the surface map and by memorizing the coordinates you could enter them from cave networks below by jumping through their ceilings.

When you first enter a tower, Link is launched high into the sky and pulls out his Purah Pad tablet to scan the surrounding land and sky areas. From that point on, you can fast travel back to the towers and launch out of them whenever you want which is ideal to get somewhere quickly by paragliding. What became my routine when first entering a sky tower was to use the height I gained from launching upwards to paraglide to nearby sky islands. If you exclude the Great Sky Islands, roughly 80% of the important sky islands are easily accessible by launching yourself from a tower and these largely proved disappointing. While the Great Sky Islands were large enough to feature mountains and rivers to traverse, most of the rest of the sky islands are thin and narrow. Worse though, they largely feel copy and pasted in function. When you paraglide onto your first set of sky islands in a chain, you’ll often traverse some narrow walkways and make use of prebuilt or nearly built Zonai devices to traverse to the next small island in the chain. This usually leads to a plus sign shaped island that in the center has a launch pad that can rocket you to other nearby islands, one end will have Zonai device dispenser (essentially a gacha capsule machine where you gamble Zonai charges you acquire when you defeat robots to hopefully get items you want), and finally another end will either have a shrine ready to enter or it will task you to bring a nearby crystal over which is pointed to with a laser beam to activate it. Now if it is one of the crystal shines either you’ll be fighting a Flux Construct boss (perhaps my favorite boss in the game as you have to Ultrahand away its core block to dismantle and damage the shape changing robot), making simple flying vehicles to transport it, or moving islands around with nearby devices to create a path. These activities are all pretty fun so it’s just a shame it feels so mechanical with the repeated islands and layouts.

The other 20% of sky islands out of reach require you to make use of vehicles which I haven’t really talked about yet. Vehicles are constructed with Link’s new Ultrahand ability by grabbing nearby objects and gluing them together. When your creations don’t have any electronics on them, like a simple raft or bridge, it’s just a matter of placing them where they are needed. But if they do involve a Zonai Device, like say a fan used for propulsion, it will dip into your portable energy cells if a battery isn’t directly attached to the device. When you begin the game, you only have one battery icon made up of three pips which can deplete very quickly unless you dip into your Zonai charges which you might want to save for the gacha machines. Thankfully your humble energy cell capacity can be expanded over time to up to sixteen batteries or 48 pips. You need 100 energy charges to expand your energy pool by one pip and you need either 300 normal pieces of Zonaite or 15 pieces of Large Zonaite to make 100 charges. That’s a lot of Zonaite! Barely any Zonaite can be found on the surface so you’ll have to go down to the Depths in order to mine any or claim it from defeated enemies down there which is an arduous task. Zonaite is also used with the one hidden arm ability, Autobuild, which handily lets you reassemble your most recent creations and ones you have saved, so the grind to max out your batteries isn’t even straightforward. In the midst of all this, I do appreciate Zonaite gives each layer of the world a purpose. The surface is where most of your adventure and building happens, the sky islands are where you gather new Zonai devices (every gacha machine offers different items) and demands the need to construct batteries, while the Depths are the clear path to harvesting more Zonaite. Outside of the colossal grind to really empower your creations and some slightly clumsy item rotation controls, construction with Ultrahand in general is simple and powerful to execute with. It’s especially impressive too if you attach a control stick part as vehicles, both ground and flying machines, just intuitively control. While I’d like to see future Zelda games focus on the playable characters abilities directly again, I’d be sad if building doesn’t return in some fashion in future games because it’s that cool.

While there aren’t many interesting, unique sky islands and chains, there thankfully are a few. One of my favorite chains features scattered islands orbiting a Death Star looking orb that is extra high up in the sky. These islands are engulfed in a low gravity field which makes Link jump far higher and any rockets launch objects significantly farther. When you finally travel up high enough to paraglide into the Death Star like orb, inside is a puzzle revolving around manipulating light beams. Another extra cool island is engulfed in thunderstorms. I didn’t know it was ultimately attached to the main quest so I visited it early by building a flying machine (I made a really simple but effective one by attaching two fans to a control stick lol). With my machine I flew over the island and effectively parachuted in. With all of the lightning in full effect, I removed my equipment and stumbled around in the fog until I found a shrine and ultimately a door that led to the resting place of the fifth sage. I was shocked when I had a cutscene play and my main quest updated ahead of the main story. One other set of islands that proved very cool were the labyrinth islands that involve all three layers of the map. On the surface you have to renavigate the returning treacherous mazes on the ground now covered in gloom to activate a door in the sky labyrinths. By pulling out and putting away your paraglider to ride wind currents you can navigate these suspended 3D mazes. Finally, your efforts culminate in you diving back down and through the earth to fight a construct boss. I’ll talk about them specifically later, but some of my favorite shrines in the game were housed in the floating labyrinths which made them even more special. Finally, I was both thrilled and terrified when I discovered my first sky island in the corner of the map above Eventide Island that was home to a King Gleeok Super Boss. King Gleeoks are the toughest challenge to conquer in Zelda TK as they are three headed dragons with fire, ice, and lightning heads which makes them tough to plan for (normal Gleeoks only have one active element). They also hit like trucks and their large health demands significant resources to deplete. Killing my first King Gleeok was one of my favorite achievements in my adventure.

​When I was done activating all of the towers, I turned my attention towards tackling my first regional phenomenon and first dungeon. I had hit up enough of the stables and talked to enough people reading the newspaper to see the game was pushing me towards the Rito Village first so I decided to make that my first stop. Along the way I encountered Impa in a field next to a geoglyph, artwork that covers large swaths of the surface. I had encountered a few earlier in my adventure, but didn’t know what you had to do with them, namely search for a small pool of water. These were the actual tears of the kingdom and functioned as the Memory equivalent from BOTW. In this game, the tears revealed Zelda had traveled back in time 10,000 some years ago to the founding of Hyrule. From this point on you could activate the tears in any order and unfortunately I just so happened to grab the last one next. The Zelda series regularly mistreats Zelda as she is often kidnapped and/or cursed in most games and thus needs rescuing. Somehow Tears of the Kingdom is the worst Zelda has been treated so far and this one actually made me angry. In that final memory, it’s revealed that not only was Zelda removed from all of the events of the main game, again, this time it is because she was inexplicably sent to the past through no choice of her own just so she could have the opportunity to lose her humanity for 10,000+ years by becoming an immortal dragon so her body could guard and revive the damaged Master Sword. I was so let down and upset by this terrible revelation about Zelda’s role in the adventure since I was hoping since she was rescued in the last game she’d actually get to participate in this adventure and instead we got this absolutely insulting nonsense. Following this, the rest of the story never recovered for me. I was also disappointed that many of the more interesting characters like Rauru, Mineru, and Ganondorf were also once again largely relegated to the past story rather than being active forces in the present day story as I often found them more interesting than characters in the present.

​The first part of the main quest, the regional phenomena, tasks you with visiting each of the four main towns you visited in BOTW, namely the Rito’s, Goron’s, Zora’s, and Gerudo’s. Once again, the towns are facing a crisis of some kind, for example an unnatural cold snap for the Rito. While I enjoy interacting with townspeople, it struck me how low my interest was returning to these towns walking in as only the main characters in each town had made lasting impressions from BOTW. Still, I did enjoy returning to Zora’s Domain because of the interesting architecture and I adored seeing the new goofy statue erected depicting Sidon and Link’s heroics from BOTW. I also really enjoyed the Gerudo town because I didn’t expect to have to break into an emergency center all of the townspeople were using to hide from the Ghibdo hordes outside. I enjoyed exploring the shelter so much I gladly took up a side quest that involved taking pictures of ancient tablets hidden inside. Each town ultimately points you towards an approach to each dungeon and my favorites were certainly Tulin’s and Sidon’s. Tulin’s has you climb up a series of sky islands and flying ships to reach the Wind Temple and it was my favorite traversal in the game thanks to Tulin’s partner ability to summon a gust of wind which lets you launch yourself forward while paragliding. Sidon’s, who is my favorite of the modern champions, has you cleaning up gunk in Zora’s Domain like it is Mario Sunshine, tackling cool puzzles on a fish shaped island and the Ancient Zora Waterworks, and ultimately ascending high into the sky by swimming up a waterfall. Outside of Sidon, I think the characters at the heart of these quests just being ok means the lead up to shrines didn’t quite leave the impact I wanted. 

The actual temples themselves are generally a major improvement over the Divine Beasts from BOTW as the puzzles and combat encounters are better and more tightly united. One of my favorites is the Fire Temple which heavily revolves around riding and adjusting the routes of minecarts. It becomes particularly engaging once you have to start thinking both horizontally and vertically. The Fire Temple also prominently features one of my favorite mechanics in the game of cooling chunks of lava, picking them up with Ultrahand, and then gluing them together to solve puzzles. Another temple I really enjoyed was the Lightning Temple as it begins with Indiana Jones-style ruins exploration before you enter a vertical chamber that has puzzles and puzzle rooms that connect across floors. Unfortunately, there is one major part of one temple that fell flat. The final temple, which occurs after a welcome return to Hyrule Castle and an exploration of the Zonai Ruins, starts off strong with collecting, transporting, and assembling pieces of a robot. Sadly, if riding the robot was supposed to be a power trip it was anything but for me, as even equipping cannons to it barely made enemies flinch. I was left wondering how much of the sequence was scripted versus how much was impacted by enemies leveling up as your playtime increases (an annoying feature shared with BOTW) as I was 100 hours in by then. I quickly opted to fight most monsters during the robot section on foot which was underwhelming.

All of the temples culminate in boss fights that have you make use of your partner’s abilities and are all fairly good fun even if they are a tad easy. My favorite was the final temple’s boss fight as you fight in a wrestling ring essentially and have to use your robot to push the other one into the walls of the arena. Clearing dungeons offers a great reward as they let you bring the spirits of your friends along so you can continue to have access to their abilities. You can ultimately fight alongside all five of them in battle at once too which helps makes battles feel more dynamic. I’m really glad I chose the Wind Temple first, because Tulin with his ability to create wind gusts and his clutch shots with a bow made him a very valuable partner for the majority of my journey. Yunobo’s ability to break rocks and Riju’s ability to summon lightning were also versatile and interesting to take regular advantage of.

After I completed my first dungeon, I turned my attention to the Depths and began the process of lighting all 120 Lightroots. This was easily the most draining task of the game. While I had individual moments of fun like throwing a bright bloom seed into the darkness and seeing the terrain illuminate in unexpected ways or by taking out enemy camps and bosses to secure more Zonaite, the core experience here was really looking ahead to the next orange dot and stumbling my way in the darkness while dodging enemies and Gloom to activate the next root. While I was blown away that the Zelda team managed to mirror the amount of space as the surface, I think I would have greatly preferred a more focused and visually interesting experience as most of the Depths really blur together being so gray (even the alien looking plant life gets drowned out). I was disappointed there was so little to discover below the surface outside of the mines that help you process Zonaite. There’s a very cool Shadow of the Colossus looking statue in the Northwestern portion of the map, another beneath the Great Mine (which has a good side quest attached to it where you must find and reattach its eyes), and a few showdowns with Master Kohga who returns from BOTW and is goofier than ever. I’m glad at launch there were a few easy item duplication tricks to take advantage of, because if I didn’t have a way to speed up the Zonaite collection grind I’d probably feel even worse about the Depths. As it stands, I’m disappointed the substantial new world for Tears of the Kingdom is so blah. I am glad however I cleared out the Depths because it made it so much easier to find all of the 120 shrines on the surface as these are all placed directly above each Lightroot.

When I completed the Depths, I turned my attention next towards clearing all 152 shrines (32 are in the sky) and like in BOTW before it, I really enjoyed the Shrines overall. There may be too many free shrines, where just reaching them gives you the reward, but there are still plenty of interesting ones. My favorite, because it was so unexpected, was a tribute to the Halo 3 final Warthog escape sequence that featured a very similarly controlling vehicle, low gravity, and slanted panels to drive on. Another cool video game reference was Shining in the Darkness, inspired by the old school dungeon crawler of the same name. You have to navigate a maze with only a flashlight and it is satisfying to notice the hole in the ceiling that you can Ascend through to ultimately get out. There were also many great shrines built around construction. I don’t remember the names of these, but one served as my introduction to cooling down and assembling lava chunks which I mentioned I really enjoyed in the Fire Temple. Others had you assembling vehicles like planes and sleds, while some had you build things like rail cars, a prize scooper, and a baseball hitting machine. Any shrine that featured, foldable bridges often proved really interesting as well as the physics involved were often so fun to play around with.

​My favorite shrine type in Tears of the Kingdom were the combat shrines that took after Eventide Island in BOTW by completely stripping Link of all of his equipment. You have to plan your route carefully through these shrines to carefully pick away at enemies and acquire more and more powerful equipment. My favorite combat in the game took place in these shrines as a lot of the combat systems (Fuse especially) shine best when you have to make all of your resources count and also when enemies are lower leveled because status effects and explosions are more devastating. While it certainly would change how bosses function in the overworld perhaps for the worse, these challenges do make me wonder if the next Zelda game should ditch stats again and focus more on fun interactions in combat. Regardless, I really hope if Zelda TK does get DLC we’ll see more Eventide-like combat challenges. Since I’m on the subject of combat, I’ll just say overall it remains fairly similar to BOTW. I liked it there and I again like it here even with new quirks like Fuse meaning you regularly have the right tool for every occasion and the loss of remote bombs meaning you don’t have a free weapon disarming move. Zelda TK does address one of my bigger complaints about BOTW, the small enemy roster, by introducing some new enemies. I already mentioned I love the new boss monsters like the Flux Construct and the Gleeoks, and these are joined by a good handful of normal enemies too. I particularly enjoyed fighting the ancient robots, Horriblins, Like Likes, and Ghibdos.

Before I discuss the last section of the game, I do want to give a brief shout out to two of my favorite side quests that centered around two returning towns, Lurelin and Hateno. Lurelin has been invaded by pirates which are composed of higher level monsters. When I first visited Lurelin I was overwhelmed, so I felt so accomplished when I felt ready and ultimately did drive them out. I appreciated this wasn’t the end of the side quest as you both get to defeat the pirates once and for all on Eventide Island (I had found their empty hideout earlier in my adventure and was very confused why I couldn’t clear it) and rebuild the town itself by gathering materials and repairing the buildings. Hateno village has been consumed by fashion which threatens the traditional farming roots of the town. This felt like a classic Zelda town quest as you had to investigate both mayoral candidates’ schedules and secrets and talk to everyone in town. Since I’m talking about towns, like in BOTW before it, I largely forgot to interact with Tarrey Town again until after the credits…whoops. Perhaps it would have meant more had I finished the quest in BOTW, but I did enjoy the vibe of the town. After finishing the Side Adventure there, I found the house construction service that opens up to be conceptually neat, but I felt limited with how few rooms and furnishings are available.

Once I was done with all of my goals for the game, clearing every shrine and Lightroot, completing the main quest, and tackling enough side quests, I was ready to march into Ganondorf’s lair in the Depths below Hyrule Castle. I actually unexpectedly stumbled into his hiding place early on in my adventure since I wanted to see the rest of the obscured murals from the prologue. It was so cool to discover such an intense enemy gauntlet for a Zelda game and be overwhelmed with how treacherous the terrain was as most of the ground and walls are covered in Gloom. Even with dodging some of the bigger enemies, including the Lynel, I was really happy and satisfied with this final challenge. When it came time to fight Ganondorf, I was at first a little let down facing some of his weaker troops, but I was happy to see the Sages join the fight directly as it better tied the modern day story together. The actual battle with Ganondorf was excellent even though I was overly prepared walking in as I had great equipment, tons of fairies, and many full health potions. I especially enjoyed seeing Ganondorf perfect dodge some of my attacks and I adored when round 2 started his health bar doubled in the most comical way possible by only extending far to the right. The extra final battle where Ganondorf turns into a dragon was a simple, but still spectacular finish. It reminded me of my favorite battle in Shadow of the Colossus in a great way and I loved the super over the top final explosion when you finally defeat him for good.

I walked away from Tears of the Kingdom certainly with some mixed feelings. A solid majority of this game I thoroughly enjoyed, while other elements felt like a retread (the surface map), others were draining and repetitive (the Depths), and one key story element, the worst treatment of Zelda herself yet, was wildly disappointing. BOTW and its DLC took me about 65+ hours for my first playthrough and I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. With Zelda TK, I rolled credits at 110+ hours and felt that even though it was such a bigger adventure it certainly wasn’t always a better adventure. Some of the uneven qualities of TK I do think I’ll value more as time goes on as I do think a good deal of the choices made here are interesting ones I didn’t fully vibe with rather than being necessarily bad. While this is true to an extent of every game, I think because of Zelda TK’s huge open ended nature my enjoyment was really impacted by how I chose to approach and navigate my way through it. Whereas with a game like A Link Between Worlds I just walked away more cleanly disappointed, I’m really interested in talking about Zelda TK further with others and seeing their opinions in the weeks, months, and years to come. While it hasn’t been announced either way yet, I am looking forward as well to see what DLC might add to the experience. Finally, I’m left more curious than ever what exactly the next open air Zelda game might look like after Tears of the Kingdom. Some of the new ideas presented in Zelda TK, like Ultrahand and caves, I’d love to see how they fit in an entirely new world to explore and there’s so much potential to rethink core systems here like the combat and exploration. Despite where I am personally relatively down on Tears of the Kingdom, I’m very glad it overall was such a fascinating, unique, and exciting experience.

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Thanks for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’m curious what you think about Tears of the Kingdom, so definitely reach out and share! I’m on less these days, but you can still find me @JustinMikos on Twitter for now. Until next time!