A true incremental update from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom evolves the focus on exploration and Z-axis gameplay.
For the record, I never completed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The combat mechanics combined with personal age and Bluetooth latency meant that I had to play as if I had 200 ping against the Calamity bosses. Similar to Splatoon 3, the bosses this time around are definitely easier, but still very memorable. There’s less reliance on perfect dodges and parries but you’ll be taking to the air more to perform hair trigger bow attacks.
This doesn’t mean you can give the game to a child. The difficulty spikes in the (returning) shrines are massive. Critical thinking is a requirement. Teenagers will be forced to learn traditional and hypothetical physics in order to progress, while the very young and very old will need assistance. The final boss encounter? Insane difficulty spike. Literally the inverse of the last sentence from the previous paragraph.
The size of the game is insane. If the same gameplay engine is used again (Switch 2 Zelda??) I could see a return to the Dark World (Link to the Past) in addition to the 3 maps, making it 6 maps total. Overall I’m satisfied but actually want more. I mentally compare it to Chrono Trigger. Similar traversal time. Technically, no loading time took longer than 15 seconds. Much impressive.
Some negatives. The soundtrack is not as good. Flat out. The dungeon pieces in particular. The Divine Beast songs have Morse code (SOS) that increases in frequency as you progress in the dungeon. The Construct shrines had some bangers also. So far, only the Shrine of Light songs caught my attention as being memorable. The damage in this game… is insane. I mention earlier the combat was easier, but that’s assuming you know the attack patterns. Otherwise… every named enemy (non-minor) has a 7 heart attack against your rank 1 armor. The very old and very young will have problems here. There’s still a lot of voice missing, no excuse for having unvoiced dialogue in 2023. Understandably, there’s 6 languages to translate so… have a prompt to download on game boot?
Finished the game on August 11, 2023. Nintendo tracked 55 hours of gameplay.
