I’ve been a fan of “The Legend of Zelda” for nearly my entire life. Just a year after I got my Wii, I started playing “Skyward Sword” for the first time. “Tears of the Kingdom” builds on the sky of “Skyward Sword.” In fact, when I say “Tears of the Kingdom” lives up to the hype, I mean it tenfold. This game deserves to go down in history as one of the best Zelda games and potentially one of the best games ever made.
The story of “Tears of the Kingdom” opens with Zelda and Link in the depths of Hyrule Castle, where they find a mummified Ganondorf imprisoned by a mysterious hand. The hand falls off, and Ganondorf awakens. He proceeds to attack Zelda and Link with a new mysterious substance called Gloom. Zelda falls into a chasm and Link goes in after her, but is caught by the hand while Zelda disappears. Overall, it’s a great opening sequence with outstanding atmosphere and tension.
Before launch, the marketing team for “Tears of the Kingdom” loved to show off the sky, but they neglected to mention the depths. The depths have nearly the same amount of content as the main world, if not more. My only guess as to why they would do this is so they could add to the mystery and horror of the depths. This is really just a strange choice that I had to mention.
Of course, I can’t write a review without talking about the music, and boy does “Tears of the Kingdom” deliver on that front. Most of the soundtrack is just remixes of the song that plays when you jump off the starting island, but that song is an amazing starting point for the soundtrack. I’m not going to spoil the ending, but the feeling you get when you jump off the starting island carries through to the end of the main story. The soundtrack just adds a lot to the climactic feel the whole game has.
How could we have a review of this game without mentioning the building? We’ve all seen the clips of people building spaceships and monster trucks with the Zonai devices in the game. The creativity that the building system allows for is worth the whole $70 on its own. I’m not really a creative person, but I can see just how good this system is.
One of the biggest criticisms of “Breath of the Wild” was the Divine Beasts and shrines. The shrines have returned in “Tears of the Kingdom”, however the Divine Beasts have been replaced by some amazing temples. The wind temple is by far my favorite, with the boss Colgera having the Dragon Roost Island theme in its soundtrack.verall every dungeon feels great. This game is definitely a major step up from “Breath of the Wild”.
Overall, “Tears of the Kingdom” feels great to finally play. Everything about it feels as though every previous Zelda game has led to this moment. Every element of the game has so much polish (besides the duplication exploits). I’d say it deserves to go down in history as one of the greatest Zelda games of all time if not one of the greatest games ever made.
