Review: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo Switch)

The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite video game series of all time. Being a fan, I’m sure I have had blind spots to certain aspects of Zelda games over the years but I’ve also tried to be objective as best I can with each new entry. It was hard for me to describe my thoughts on Breath of the Wild (BOTW) and it’s equally, if not more so, difficult to discuss Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK). Both games are so ambitious and amazing in their own rights, but almost equally as disappointing to me at the same time. Nintendo has obviously sold a lot of copies of BOTW and TOTK so something must be working, right? Why not continue to make Zelda games like these moving forward? After all, they’re selling like crazy. It’s a valid question that I hope to shed some light on. Tears of the Kingdom is an incredible game to be sure but still a fundamentally disappointing Zelda experience to me. More content and things to do is not necessarily better.

The story in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is told in largely the same way as Breath of the Wild. You’ll find various ‘memories’ around the world map that can be viewed or completely ignored by the player. They can be completed in any order and while that offers a lot of freedom, it also gives a fairly disjointed experience throughout. The player doesn’t really need to engage with the story and I felt disconnected from it for most of my playthrough. The voice acting is okay but I wouldn’t have minded if it was completely absent. It feels a bit too dramatic at times and typically takes me out of the scene more than engrossing me in it. I don’t mind the freedom in finding memories in various parts of the map but it would be nice if the cutscenes were experienced in order.

Overall this type of storytelling is not my cup of tea. Ganondorf, while it’s cool that he’s a part of this game, never feels like he’s actually ‘active’ in the world. Most of the story cutscenes are telling us what he did in the past while in the present, he’s really just hidden away underground. When you find him, it initiates the final battle. It doesn’t feel like he has that much of a ‘presence’ in the world. I was hoping for some more characterization but he’s sort of one dimensional throughout the game. With Breath of the Wild, I felt that Calamity Ganon was too much of a mindless monster but Ganondorf doesn’t feel much more opaque here. Sure, there’s certain things he’s motivated by now but he had so much more depth in Wind Waker or even Twilight Princess. I won’t go into many spoilers with the story but it felt as good as Breath of the Wild, maybe a little bit better. Although I wouldn’t put this as the peak of the Zelda series for story.

While the story isn’t much to write home about, Tears of the Kingdom adds an incredible assortment of new abilities and there’s really no other game that comes close to offering the variety of gameplay experiences that TOTK does. It really is a feat of engineering to see all of these gameplay systems work so well together even if some of the new abilities are a bit mixed in practice. Ultra hand, a complex building system allowing players to craft things in 3D space, is a triumph. You can build almost anything you can think of by combining all sorts of items in the world. It’s a really novel tool but I often didn’t use it that much as the game went on. You’ll eventually get an ability that allows you to build things quicker but even then, I didn’t really care to use it. Ascend is a fun new ability with some cleverly implemented combat and puzzle implications. Fuse is an okay ability but more often than not, it was more of a hassle than an asset. Not being able to break apart fused items was my biggest issue with this ability. Recall is interesting on paper but in practice, I just never really needed to use it. Sure, I could use it to reverse projectiles from enemies in battle but why? It was quicker and easier to just flurry rush.

Tell us how you really feel Justin! I know, I know, I’ve been a bit of a downer with the game so far but let’s dig into some aspects that I actually enjoyed in Tears of the Kingdom and what they actually improved upon from Breath of the Wild. One of the biggest improvements, for me, are the boss battles. These are much improved over Breath of the Wild. Each boss has a unique design, variety of attack methods, and interesting strategies for defeating. They each felt a bit more ‘puzzle-like’ which was exactly what I was hoping to see — the last boss battle was particularly epic. The new abilities have some decent fun. However, I was a bit bummed that they didn’t build on Breath of the Wild’s abilities but rather acted as replacements. Ultrahand and Ascend are heavily used while Recall and Fuse I never bothered with as much. Fuse was ultimately more time consuming than it was worth. Having to fuse each arrow you shoot every time was an absolute chore. Scrolling through all the items to fuse to arrows was equally tedious. Wait, this is supposed to be the pros list not more cons.

I will say that I enjoyed the caves that they added to the main overworld. You can drop down wells or find caves in the sides of mountains — there really are a variety of types of caves with a myriad of items, fauna and flora in each. These were some of the most interesting new biomes added to the game. The depths, an entirely underground area about the size of the main overworld, has some interesting things to discover but it’s so dark and gloomy down there that I never stayed for too long. The sky islands are one of the main showcases Nintendo had in recent trailers but this is probably where I spent the least amount of time. They are all very similar aesthetically and I mostly ended up using them as launching points and not for much else. There are several new enemy types and I’ll give them kudos on the designs for these. It’s good to see the Gleeoks back and the frog enemies in the depths are fun new world bosses. Also, there are plenty of new outfits to find like a wingsuit and a frog suit. These will increase some maneuverability in certain scenarios but they don’t go as far as I would have liked. The wingsuit really doesn’t give you much more ability to glide around and when climbing in the rain, the frog suit will help, but it won’t fully prevent sliding.

Moving on to the ‘dungeons’ or temples as they are called in this game — they are improved over Breath of the Wild but are still quite a bit worse than previous Zelda games. The open nature to each dungeon meant that you could easily ‘cheese it’ or work around solutions with your own, hodgepodge of a solution. Some might love that and feel ‘smart’ for figuring out a workaround but I always felt like I was missing something and it made me feel the opposite. The Gerudo temple was probably the closest thing to a traditional dungeon but it still falls short. The ultimate irony is that discovery is the name of the game for Zelda’s overworld but, for these ‘dungeons’, they give you the map layout from the start and the locations of each ‘switch’ to activate. It totally removes any mystery or sense of accomplishment when you do anything in the temple. I know exactly where everything is at all times and can simply bee-line it to the next ‘objective’. It’s a paltry, Ubisoft-level open-world design where they give you a ton of icons and say ‘go nuts’. The sooner Nintendo abandons these ‘dungeons’, the better. I know that’s harsh but there really aren’t many redeeming qualities about these dungeons. Yes, they finally went back to themed dungeons where they aren’t all the same aesthetic which is good, but they are just more of the same thing you experience in the overworld, just in a slightly more enclosed space.

I’m going to be honest, I was also really disappointed to see the exact same combat in Tears of the Kingdom. We also have the exact same menus/UI, art style and half of the overworld is largely the same. Prior to the success of Breath of the Wild, we received wholly unique Zelda games with each new entry. Sure, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask shared the same art style, but they were vastly different overworlds, gameplay style, tone, everything. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom feel too similar. If you liked Breath of the Wild, I suppose that’s a good thing but if you didn’t, it just prolongs a feeling of disappointment in the current state of Zelda games. More often than not, in Tears of the Kingdom, if I saw a place I had visited in BOTW, it really didn’t encourage me to check it out again. I was like, ‘oh, I’ve seen that, moving on’. This leads to another major criticism — the rewards just aren’t worth it. The treasure chests in shrines or even in dungeons are the most basic ‘treasures’ you can think of. Expecting a nice shield or weapon in a dungeon treasure chest? Nope, here’s some arrows. More often than not, I was getting things that I would’ve been able to find while cutting grass in a previous Zelda game. I was used to Zelda games being whole new worlds I’m exploring, new dungeons to figure out, puzzles to solve, bosses to battle. Now, Zelda games seem to be more about collecting, crafting, and cooking. I know I’m being pretty harsh but it just really feels like there’s so much to do in Tears of Kingdom but so little substance.

For those who loved Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom will certainly be up their alley. It feels like a more ‘fully realized’ version of Breath of the Wild honestly. I don’t think Breath of the Wild 2.0 or 3.0 is an unfair description. No, I’m not saying Tears of the Kingdom is just ‘DLC’ but it does feel so inherently tied to the first game — which of course makes sense for a game that started life as “The Sequel to Breath of the Wild”. It really does feel like the closest sequel that’s ever been done in the Zelda series. And again, if you enjoyed BOTW, that’s certainly a positive but for me, that’s more of a negative.