Right, because of magic, I’ve been playing Tears of the Kingdom for a week or so. It’s absolutely incredible and I want to share my thoughts but, I’m torn on this. Many, many moments in this game so far have blown my mind a bit and I couldn’t spoil these for anyone without feeling extremely guilty, however, there’s plenty of things I wish I knew going in. Here are my ‘sort-of’ spoiler-free thoughts on my time with the game so far. I’m not going to talk on any specifics, nor detail anything that isn’t already common knowledge via previews or the available footage online. There’s some stuff I’ve seen in other reviews that I would love to talk about, but I’ve left it out or kept things intentionally vague here - this isn’t a review where I have to cover all aspects, just my ‘spoiler-free’ thoughts. Obviously, if you want to go in completely blind then fuck off now and I’ll see you next week - you are about to have a bloody good time - but for the rest of you, let’s get into it.

LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

There was a moment, many hours into Tears Of The Kingdom where I just put the pad down and said out loud to myself in my flat “How have they fucking managed THIS?”. I consider Breath of the Wild to be a complete masterpiece - not only a stellar Zelda game but also a game that redefined the open world genre and set a bar so high only Elden Ring has come close in the years following its release - but Tears Of The Kingdom is just so much more FUN than Breath of the Wild. It’s also a much, much better ZELDA game, in the more traditional sense. It’s a better game than what is often considered one of the best videogames ever made. I still can’t quite believe it.

One thing worth getting out the way straight away is that being able to take to the skies and explore the ‘world above’ isn’t quite as big a deal as the initial trailers would have you believe, instead being some specific segments that act as the starting area, standalone puzzle bits and areas where you can find hidden treasures, but it does add a lot more to explore and cool things to find in a game where, ultimately, exploration is the most important and rewarding thing you can do. It’s weird, because it is touted as such an important part of Tears of the Kingdom and, in reality, is used a bit more sparingly than expected. There’s far more to the world than meets the eye this time around, but, as I said in the intro - no major spoilers here!

Using the same world map as Breath of the Wild gives the game Majora’s Mask vibes - although that game has a totally different map to Ocarina of Time, there’s a similarity in the way that it reworks existing assets to play on your existing expectations. Locations have little tweaks and changes to make them feel new and fresh but it is the familiarity and seeing the way they’ve been twisted that makes things still feel really fresh. There’s always a spin on them, be it different weather conditions, new routes carved into them or other environmental differences that change things up a bit. Characters have lives, with some major events taking place between the two games, bringing new characters into the mix or offering up a different take on an old friend or two. It gives Hyrule, perhaps for the first time, a lived-in, consistent feel. Time has passed and things have changed.

The new abilities are where Tears of the Kingdom really shines, however. While the ones you had in Breath of the Wild could all be used in genius ways, with videos popping up on social media years after release showcasing things never previously thought possible, the abilities available here have so many more instantly obvious uses. The one that seems to have the least practicality is ‘Ascend’, which literally allows you to ascend through solid surfaces - really useful for climbing structures and getting out of one of the many caves you’ll find dotted around Hyrule. The rest, however, have so many possibilities. ‘Recall’ can be used to move an item back the way it came - simple stuff like turning a waterwheel back on itself or sending an enemy projectile right back at it, for instance - but honestly I found myself mainly using it almost like an ‘undo’ function. The amount of times some hair-brained contraption of mine slide down a hill away from me, only for me to use 'Recall’ and watch it return to me is a shamefully high amount. ‘Fuse’ is one you’ll be using a lot during exploration, as it will allow you to stick something to your weapon or shield, be that a rock or a tree trunk but also things that you break off enemies when you kill them. As well as potentially adding a new status to the weapon/shield, it also buffs the damage output and durability.

The smartest ability, of course, is the ULTRAHAND. This allows you to stick stuff together, allowing you to build whatever contraptions your imagination can come up with. This can be things you find out in the field, like tree trunks, rocks and planks of wood but there’s these building specific items, created by an ancient race called the ‘Zonai’. These items vary from winged gliders, wheels, fans, rockets, various weapons and more and, as well as finding them scattered around the world map, there’s these giant gacha machines that you can dump resources you get from killing enemies into and they’ll spit out a load of random ones that you can store in your inventory and pop them out when needed. So far, the only limit has been your own creativity and, much like Breath of the Wild, the consistency in the rules that govern the game world mean that if you THINK something is going to work, it probably will.

Combining these new abilities with the pre-existing knowledge you may already have of Breath of the Wild allows you to think up some really creative solutions to the problems the game throws at you. The brilliant magic feeling you get in Breath of the Wild when you think you cheated your way through a particular situation through your own smart use of the tools provided happens a lot more here. Honestly, the amount of times I’ve felt like I’ve taken a massive shortcut, even verging on a speed-running style ‘skip’ only to find out that might actually have been the right thing to do but still have that little feeling that, maybe it wasn’t is significantly more than the previous game. The key difference is in that practicality of the new abilities. While there’s no denying the abilities you had in Breath of the Wild were really cool, you tended to use them for solving puzzles or very specific tasks. The creativity came from how you manipulated the consistent rules that govern Hyrule or react to them when they’re thrust upon you. You could stretch the rules to breaking point but rarely actually break them completely. In Tears of the Kingdom, you’ll find yourself using them far more often and in ways you’re not entirely sure Nintendo intended. Breaking the rules of the game, or at least the feeling that you’re breaking the rules, is always thrilling.

One of the biggest complaints aimed at Breath of the Wild were the ‘Divine Beasts’, essentially what replaced the traditional Zelda dungeon. Now, I liked the Divine Beasts a lot but I get it - dungeons ARE the best part about traditional Zelda games. Now, I’m not going to tell you that dungeons, in the traditional sense, are back but the temples that are this game’s ‘Divine Beasts’ are certainly a lot more like the classic dungeons of old. Instead of having an item that you find within that acts as the gimmick for all of the puzzles and means of progressing to the boss fight, the locations in which the temple is found and the theme of said temple acts as the primary gimmick and you use the power granted to you by the Sage of that particular temple, combined with the abilities you have from the outset to try and solve them. There’s a bit of Zelda magic here, when you first enter these temples and complete the first puzzle - a total setup gimme, designed to showcase the core concept behind the dungeon - and I just found myself grinning, knowing full well that over the next hour or so I’m going to see this concept stretched to absolute breaking point, intentionally and, as is the case with this take on Zelda, otherwise. They are, categorically, way smarter and interesting than the Divine Beasts and will almost certainly go some way to softening the no dungeon blow this time around. So far (and I’ve bested three of them) they’re been excellent.

The bosses. Zelda games ALWAYS have good bosses - a final test of the gimmick that has underpinned the dungeon they sit at the end of. Although I enjoyed the Divine Beasts, I did find the boss fights in Breath of the Wild to be its weakest element by far. The ‘Something Blight’ Ganon fights, although decent scraps in their own right, all felt very same-y. Here, the bosses are far more like traditional Zelda bosses, requiring you to use the sage’s power to create an opening where you can start damaging them. I’ve bested three so far and all three wouldn’t feel out of place in something like Ocarina of Time - there’s much more variety than the Breath of the Wild bosses and their designs are excellent.

For all of those whiny, uncultured bitches who don’t like the weapons breaking in Breath of the Wild, well, your shit still breaks in this too and yes, it still forces you to think on your feet, constant evaluate what you have on you and either plan accordingly or react to the situation. However, there’s quite a few ways to mitigate this a bit. As mentioned above, fusing your weapon to even the most basic things - bits of wood or a rock, for instance - will give you a fairly substantial boost to both damage and durability, so you’re encouraged to do it with pretty much every standard weapon you find lying around. Every enemy usually drops three things - something that can be used in cooking/elixirs, something that can be stuck on an arrow to change the properties or something that can be fused to a weapon. Everything is useful, even the generic Moblin horns can be stuck onto a wooden stick to make a decent spear weapon and basic things like Keese eyeballs will give your arrows a homing property. It’s yet another thing to play around with, experiment with and see what the results are. You can stick any resource to your weapon or arrows and even just straight up throw them, essentially tooling up Link with an arsenal of status effect grenades. Stick a bomb flower on an arrow and you get a bomb arrow. Throw a bomb flower and you’ve basically got a hand grenade. Explosions destroy rocks, create fire if the blast hits a combustible material. The fire can be used to create gusts of wind or, if you’re really desperate, even cook food from your inventory. A lot of this stuff is the same as Breath of the Wild but the new layer of creativity that lies on top of the pre-existing world rules is another thing that makes Tears of the Kingdom feel like a fresh experience. And a better one.

Tears of the Kingdom is easily better than Breath of the Wild, which is an absolutely mad thing to say. With hindsight, Breath of the Wild now feels almost like the groundwork for this direct sequel. Every aspect is an improvement or a lesson learned, with all of the stuff that oozed confidence in Breath of the Wild - the trust that all the systems will work in a cohesive and consistent way to allow loads of player expression in play style and how to tackle situations/puzzles - oozes even MORE confidence this time around. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the cool things to do, the creative solutions I’ve found to some of the shrines, the seemingly inconsequential side-quests that open up into hours long adventures, the one-off ideas that could be fleshed out into their own fucking game… it really is something else.

THIS is a 10 out 10.

Right, because I absolutely love this game and want to talk about it IN DEPTH, here’s five of my favourite little things from the game so far. Despite not getting into any major plot points or huge surprises here, there’s obviously a spoiler warning from this point onwards so don’t read anything underneath the below .gif, okay?

The President Signs

On your travels you will occasionally stumble across this poor fella who has been tasked with putting up a load of weirdly shaped signs all across Hyrule. Unfortunately, they’re always off-balance, be it down to strange weight distribution or a strange base, for instance. It’s your job to have a look around the nearby area and fashion whatever you can to keep it upright. Tell the fella to let it go when you’re done and if the sign stands up, congratulations! Each one is a cute, short physics puzzle that can vary exponentially in difficult based on tiny changes, from the tools you have to help keep the sign standing to the surface the sign is being place upon to begin with. I expect an indie dev to nick this idea wholesale and create a puzzle game out of it within the next year or so.

The Lost Korok

Another little minigame you’ll find on your explorations are a lost Korok traveller who is trying to get to their friend’s camp, indicated by a plume of green smoke somewhere in the distance. Thing is, the Korok is a portly little lad and he can’t walk, so you need to get him there by any means necessary. A quick look around the nearby area can sometimes yield the parts to build a vehicle to transport him on, or perhaps you can use the Zonai items in your inventory to piece something together or add a key part to the things you have found. Or, in the case of one of the Koroks, I kicked the round little fucker down a hill and he rolled almost all the way to the camp, so I just needed to carry him the final few metres. Again, it’s a fun game in its own right, this.

The ‘Eventide’ Style Shrines

There’s even more variety in the objectives you need to do to complete the shrines this time around, but my absolute favourites so far are the ones where you are stripped of all of your possessions upon entering and have to utilise the tools you are given to complete an objective, like kill all of the enemies. The reason this is really cool this time around is that this includes being able to build things that could help you in this task - for one of these shrines, I built a fucking big car and drove around running everything over like it was bloody Carmageddon.

Horses!

Just an FYI, the only thing I’ve found that carries over from your Breath of the Wild save is your stabled horses, so if you’ve got a few excellent ones banked you can use it from the moment you find a stable (which are one of the main things that have changed location). My noble steed, True Lies, returns!

Hilarious Deaths

The problem with giving me this much stuff to piss about with is that I will more often than not end up getting myself killed. I wasn’t even mad at these, I just laughed. A lot.

My favourite so far have been:

• The wooden base of my makeshift hot air balloon caught fire when I was trying to shoot an arrow at an airborne enemy, missing and accidentally scattering the burning wood that was creating the hot air for the balloon.

• The bombs I attached to the front of my ‘death car’ exploded before I had a chance to jump off. The blast didn’t kill me outright, but I was launched off a cliff.

• The makeshift “plane” I made worked really well until it didn’t, plummeting into an abyss. The abyss was full of lava.

• The gigantic metal spiked ball I was carrying to throw into an enemy base was struck by lighting, which didn’t kill me, but the gigantic forest fire that began did.

• The robot I slapped a load of weapons onto was off balance, so when I switched it on it began spinning uncontrollably and simultaneous set me on fire AND electrocuted me.

(Oh, one final thing - for those of you who are simps for billion dollar corporations who are going to whine about me ‘getting to play it early’ because I found it on the internet and had the smarts to get it up and running on my Switch, here’s the copy I bought too. Nintendo still got their fifty quid. Relax. Piracy is still the most important aspect of videogame preservation.)

THANKS FOR READING.

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