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smash-64 · 28 days ago

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2024 Game of the Year Countdown Honorable Mention: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo Switch, 2023

I feel like I’ve played this game before…oh, right! I did! It was 2018 and the game was called The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Now that at least one person is furious with me, I have to say that I did not hate my time with Tears of the Kingdom. I just don’t think it lived up to the immeasurable hype that I heard from critics, websites, YouTube, and friends. I don’t think I heard a single person say a single negative thing about this game for two months after it came out. I even heard people singing its praises multiple times on NPR, one of the last platforms where I’d expect to hear video game reviews.

So, let’s start out with the things I liked after the cut, because this is going to be a super long review, for those interested.

I adored exploring the Gerudo Desert, as I did in Breath of the Wild. The Gerudo are a really fun and interesting group, and I spent significantly more time here than anywhere else. It was nice to see Link welcomed into town as the one male with a hall pass, since that meant I didn’t need to make sure to always don the disguise outfit. (Although it’s silly to put on the full Yiga Clan garb and get tossed into jail!) The addition of a subterranean area in Gerudo Town was also cool and helped add to the lore of the Gerudo having a long history. The bright colors and designs of the town, clothing, and the equipment were also still present and welcome. And seeing Riju grow into her role as leader was both cool, as she packs a wallop with her thunder attack, and reassuring as she was fairly self-conscious and unsure of herself in Breath of the Wild.

The Yiga Clan are also still around, and I found them more interesting than in BotW. I wish we had a little more from them, but they’re supposed to be in disarray after we crushed them in BotW, so it wouldn’t make a ton of sense from a narrative standpoint.

Music was generally pretty good, especially in the more plot-centric sequences. The classic Zelda swells and melodies bring emotion to the forefront, most notably nostalgia. The credits music ties the whole experience together. Can’t really go wrong with a Zelda soundtrack, although it was a touch less subtle than Breath of the Wild.

Tulin was a really refreshing character that somehow struck a balance between over-eager young bird with skills, and annoying kid. In fact, he’s one of the only kid characters I genuinely enjoyed from start to finish in any game. He’s determined to help his village, prove himself, work as a team with Link, and follow through with his new role once you complete the Wind Temple.

Finally, the characters themselves all seem to have had a bit of a glow-up, design-wise. Everyone looks great. There’s also a focus on making characters stand out more, with more unique designs and more plot relevance. Some have more of a part to play than others, but there were seemingly fewer one-off interactions in TotK. Many sidequests have multiple parts to them that occur across the map, so expect to see characters popping up more than once.

Something that has undoubtedly stood out thus far in my review is how often I have referenced Breath of the Wild. It is fully unavoidable to review Tears of the Kingdom on its own. It looks, sounds, feels, and plays like Breath of the Wild. I have heard criticisms of Majora’s Mask from some people who claim they couldn’t enjoy it as much as Ocarina of Time due to the reuse of assets, claiming it was too similar, or even lazy (which just proves they don’t know the actual history of Majora’s Mask, but I digress). But even those critics have to recognize that Majora’s Mask shares little beyond the reuse of assets as the game is fundamentally different on so many levels.

Tears of the Kingdom is so similar to Breath of the Wild, I find it hard to not look at the whole game as anything other than a massive DLC. We’re on the same map. We’ve got towers and shrines all over, and while they’re not in exactly the same spots…they’re not that different and serve the same purpose. Zelda needs rescuing. Ganon(dorf) is the bad guy. Enemies are the same. Controls are the same. It felt like I was playing the same game, maybe just a different post-game story.

The addition of the sky islands and the ill-lit underworld were so underwhelming to me that I never felt compelled to explore beyond a few minutes, aside from when I was forced to do so. I just didn’t find anything interesting about them at all. It was difficult to even get to the sky islands in the early game, and once I finally made my way there, I was expecting unique weapons and enemies, or powerful ingredients for cooking. I got neither, so I don’t really see the point. Perhaps I missed some massive highlight, but I have yet to hear about anything that would make me seek out some special, far-flung sky island for amazing content.

The same goes for the dark abyss area, which I heard was this hugely fun land to explore. When I got there, it was just…dark. I couldn’t even see anything off in the distance to entice me into exploring, and the light seeds you get don’t travel very far, nor do they light very much of the area around you, so you’re still stumbling around and hoping to just chance upon something. As a result, I didn’t do much of anything down there at all.

The Zonai tech was a huge letdown, too. I didn’t exactly adore the magnetism, bombs, stasis, etc. from BotW, but it was serviceable. This new stuff in TotK was downright not fun. When I see people building these huge, elaborate devices with fans and batteries and whatnot, I honestly cannot fathom the enjoyment they’re getting out of it. It got to the point where I just never did any shrines ever again. I’d find one and activate it as a warp point, and never go inside because they were annoying chores.

The new tech felt gimmicky at the best of times, too, and I was disappointed that the developers clearly focused so much time and effort on it instead of…anything else. Being able to throw random objects onto a sword isn’t as interesting as discovering well-crafted weapons that have a bit of lore or culture behind them. Instead, we just get a couple of very basic weapons and are expected to combine them with random monster parts to make stronger ones, but they always end up looking held together with paper clips and bubble gum.

Perhaps my time playing games from Falcom’s Trails series has bled over and corrupted my ability to fairly assess the storytelling and writing in other games and series; and while there was definitely a bigger focus on story in TotK than BotW, I still found the story to be lacking. Maybe it was just my disinterest, but it came off as very underwhelming to me. I liked individual moments, like Riju standing on her own or Zelda actually playing a part in the plot, but the overall story just didn’t click with me. It all felt like something I’d already done before.

I found the difficulty in this game to be a bit of a mixed bag. I welcomed some of the more difficult enemies and the increase in the number of boss fights, in general, but the final gauntlet was such an enormous leap in difficulty that it was ultimately the thing that made me put the game back on the shelf for about five months. I was getting bored with the game, skipped both the Goron and Zora areas, and was forced to fight their bosses at the end of the game as a result. This was definitely a difficult surprise since I had no tips from the respective champions, and while I did manage to scrape through, I never felt a sense of accomplishment, only frustration and annoyance. I appreciated the option to skip Divine Beasts in BotW, but this felt like a harsher punishment in the endgame.

Even in BotW, I was never one for “proper” Zelda combat, with parries and such, not to mention being moderately underpowered. So brute forcing it was kind of my MO, and TotK very clearly doesn’t want you to do that. As I’ve gotten older, I enjoy Hardcore Gamer Moments™ less and less and I think my favorite thing to happen to video games is the difficulty slider that allows me to choose the type of experience I have. Work and life is stressful and I don’t generally want my games to be the same. Or, at the very least, I’d like the option to choose.

Now, I must admit that when I got frustrated and put the game back on the shelf, I wasn’t really intending to ever return to it because I wasn’t having fun. However, after five months, something changed and I was open to making another attempt. The water and fire temples were extremely unenjoyable experiences, with the very long, drawn-out quests for the Spirit Sage and Master Sword being only slightly less chore-like, and this has essentially always been the case with Zelda dungeons for me. I almost never enjoy them, which explains why the list of Zelda games I like is shockingly short. I actually gave up on the Master Sword quest because it involved expanding my stamina gauge, which meant completing shrines and I hated shrines in this game, so I said screw it.

However, I did beat the game. I sought out the temples I originally skipped, finished them, and headed back to Ganondorf for a second attempt. It was definitely easier, but still a jump in difficulty compared to the rest of the game. I didn’t feel satisfied with the fights, only annoyed that I had to be troubled to finish them at all.

My last real gripe is just how this game is essentially one massive roadblock. Every single thing you want to do will be locked behind having to complete some OTHER quest first, which is supremely annoying and a complete break from what Breath of the Wild was. I found myself just wishing I was playing Breath of the Wild instead, which cannot be a glowing endorsement for Tears of the Kingdom.

I can’t say I regret playing TotK and I didn’t hate every minute I spent with the game, despite some of my grumblings. It didn’t reach the heights of BotW, but I did spend over a month playing it, when it’s all said and done. I still like the open world Zelda aspect and the art direction is still top notch. Nintendo always puts their A Team on Zelda projects, so it’s never a franchise you can ignore, even if individual games don’t do it for you.

#zelda #tloz #tears of the kingdom #nintendo #switch #goty #game of the year countdown #I hope people don't hate me for this one lol

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