My Thoughts After Playing Way Too Much 'Tears of the Kingdom'

According to my Switch I've already put more time into Tears of the Kingdom than I did Breath of the Wild and I'll almost certainly put in far more by the time I'm done with it. I normally leave these writeups for after I've finished whatever it is I'm writing about, but given that I really haven't done anything this month but play Zelda I thought I should make a note of my progress if only so I have at least one blog post up this month.

I deeply enjoyed Breath of the Wild and it's a game I do think about relatively often but there's just something about this that resonates with me on a much deeper level. If you somehow don't know what either of the games I'm talking about are, Breath of the Wild was a 2017 Zelda game that shifted the franchise into more of an open-world survival game with weapon durability and physics interactions coloring every encounter you got into. Tears of the Kingdom is built on the same foundation as that game, it fundamentally uses the same world map, the same combat mechanics, many of the same enemies, and so much else, but it builds on its predecessor in a way that I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around.

The biggest change is in Link's powerset. While he had magnetism and the ability to freeze objects in time in his previous game, those abilities seem quaint when compared to the tools he now has at his disposal. He can reverse an object's movement in time (make a falling rock fall back up; cause a projectile to fly back at the enemy that threw it), control just about every physics object as if it were BotW's Magnesis, and can fuse objects together. That last one is key.

There are gadgets and building blocks located all around the world in this game, things from wagons and planks of wood to fans and hot air balloons, and being given the ability to stitch objects together can let you do some truly WILD stuff. It's still a game with the same combat as Breath of the Wild but now there's the Garry's Mod physics gun in play and you're cobbling together vehicles like you're solving a puzzle in Bad Piggies. I have always been fascinated by "physics games" and I think the simulation aspect of Breath of the Wild was one of the reasons I was so enamored with it, so finding out that this game not only doubles down on highlighting what were already impressive interactions but also adds mechanical doo-dads was a delight.

To my surprise, I was actually disappointed when the game finally handed me the paraglider. While that was a key part of Link's mobility in the previous game there was a friction that came from the game not allowing you to use it from the jump that I came to appreciate. Every gap or river required some bespoke thingamajig to cross it but, once you have a paraglider, a lot of those problems become pretty easily navigable. I understand that a game of this scale probably wouldn't work without that, but the opening tutorial section of the game is still maybe the most interesting area to me because I never truly felt in control of my environment.

With that being said, this game is incredible. I haven't even touched on the floating sky islands or the entire second world map hidden in The Depths (that I found reminiscent of Metal Gear Survive's Dite), but this game is jam-packed full of so much stuff that it makes its predecessor, a critically lauded and beloved game, seem empty and basic in comparison.

I imagine I'll keep playing this for a long time (and I may actually stick with it after I "finish" the main story, unlike Breath of the Wild) but these are my thoughts on the game after about, uh, 100 or so hours.

100 hours. This isn't even three weeks old.