I'm defending the sandy beach on the eastern coast of Hyrule, preparing to take on a fleet of pirate ships threatening the nearby coastal village. I've just spent 15 minutes constructing the perfect flying battleship, complete with wind turbine engines, extra battery power and a row of cannons prepared to open fire on the invaders.
But as I begin to pilot my contraption, the unthinkable happens: My cannons accidentally fire an explosive shot into a nearby post at point-blank range, and the blast destroys my entire ship and knocks me to the ground. I burst into laughter and look at the clock. It's 2 am on a work night. "How the heck did I even get here?" I wonder.
This is the magic of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the 20th entry in Nintendo's fantasy action-adventure series, and 2023's tentpole video game release for the Nintendo Switch. Tears is also the sequel to 2017's Breath of the Wild, a title many hailed as the greatest video game of all time upon its release, setting a new standard for open world exploration and sandbox experimentation.
But six years later, Nintendo has outdone itself with Tears, a significant improvement on everything Breath offered back in 2017, once again raising the bar for the legendary Zelda franchise and the video game industry as a whole.
The sequel doubles down on the original's best qualities — unparalleled player freedom and jaw-dropping organic discovery — while also improving upon its weaknesses by introducing stronger dungeon design, a more compelling narrative, fleshed-out side characters and better enemy variety. But most importantly, Tears sets the players' imaginations ablaze with a powerful set of tools that turn Hyrule's enormous world into one giant puzzle with seemingly infinite solutions to explore.
Tears is Nintendo's finest achievement in its four-decade history of video game development, and is — for my money — the greatest video game ever made.
Players take control of Link, The Legend of Zelda series' silent protagonist who's continually tasked with saving Hyrule and finding Princess Zelda. This time, the familiar tale kicks into motion after a mysterious event called The Upheaval throws the kingdom into chaos. The ensuing quest takes you from the mysterious Sky Islands floating in the clouds to the deepest depths of Hyrule, with detours to every swamp, mountain, ocean and canyon in between.
Tears takes place on the same fantastical map as Breath, but Nintendo took care to ensure that both returning fans and newcomers alike could enjoy this adventure regardless of their experience with its predecessor. For returning players, Hyrule has undergone so many changes to make Tears feel like revisiting a place you went on vacation to years earlier (Nintendo doesn't specify how much time has passed, but certain character relationships hint that it's been at least five years). And for newcomers, the story and world doesn't lean heavily on Breath's lore, making it easy to jump in and experience everything without feeling like you're missing something.
Moment to moment, players explore Hyrule on foot, horseback or in a machine they build themselves. Along the way, you'll cross paths with powerful enemies Link won't be able to defeat at first, but after upgrading your weapons and armor through sidequests and exploration, you'll slowly be able to handle the world's bigger threats. Nintendo also takes a swing at restoring classic Zelda dungeons that were missing from Breath, and they mostly succeed in this effort. Tears has four enormous dungeons, themed after respective regions of the map, that each grant Link a unique ability he uses to progress through the dungeon and defeat each lair's boss. They're not exactly like the puzzle-box dungeons from classics like Ocarina of Time, but they're certainly a step in the right direction.
You'll take on three-headed dragons, skeleton soldiers, giant blobs of jelly and many other foes in your quest to solve series villain Ganondorf's latest mysterious return. Nintendo mostly plays it safe from a storytelling perspective, but there are still multiple surprising narrative twists throughout that stand toe-to-toe with the best moments in the acclaimed franchise.
The game is positively bursting with content. The amount of explorable space in Tears is well over double the world map in Breath, providing potentially hundreds of hours of meaningful, rewarding expeditions. From seeing what's changed in the familiar towns and areas to exploring the all-new caves and Sky Islands, the world is wide open to you immediately following the opening hours of the game.
If that sounds overwhelming — I assure you it's not. Where other open-world video games dump icons on your map and flood you with waypoints and goals, Tears hands players an empty map and a small number of vague objectives, and simply says, "Go." Instead of following a marker on a minimap for 100 hours until you complete the game like some other open world contemporaries, this edition of Zelda is much more about writing your story and uncovering the world of Hyrule in whatever way you choose.
I think back on my journey to that beachside battle. I was planning to wrap up the delivery quest I was in the middle of and go to sleep by 11 pm. But the wondrous world of Hyrule always has other plans. You'll set out to complete one objective, and before you know it, this meticulously designed world is pulling you in a dozen different directions. And again, it's not by the trite method of notifications, icons and markers. Instead, the game is a masterful example of organic discovery, as you'll come across your next adventure by talking to townsfolk, setting your own personal goals and just seeing what catches your eye on your way from Point A to your intended Point B... which never actually ends up being Point B.
This freeform game design extends to puzzle solving, and the lineup of brainteasers may be the strongest set of puzzles Nintendo has ever packaged in a Zelda game. This is because of the strong gameplay foundation laid out via Link's new quartet of abilities: Fuse, Ultrahand, Ascend and Recall. Gifted to the player in Tears' opening moments, these tools completely change how Link interacts with the world, enemies and objects around him, and finding creative ways to chain these abilities together is where a lot of the fun lies.
Ultrahand grants Link the power to lift and combine basically any objects imaginable, allowing players to build vehicles, mech robots or pretty much whatever else they can imagine. Fuse lets Link attach any item he wants to his sword, shield or arrow, resulting in hilarious combinations like a Tony Hawk-esque shield/skateboard hybrid, a comically long spear made by attaching two spears to one another, and literally thousands more possibilities. Recall is a fresh spin on the Zelda franchise's fascination with time travel, as Link can rewind the path of any object in the world, while Ascend allows the hero to portal jump through ceilings to areas above.
Tears is brimming with puzzles that require players to think outside the box with these four key abilities. But, Nintendo never demands mastery of these skills, because there's almost always a way to solve every puzzle differently than the solution that's offered. Nintendo doesn't care if you solve a puzzle as intended. So long as Link reaches the end of a puzzle chamber, the game still rewards you for completing it. Don't have a good understanding of some of the physics-based systems? Just build a super long bridge to walk past your problems. It usually works.
Tears' physics and gameplay systems are surprisingly rooted in reality. From the buoyancy of objects in water to the way metal items conduct electricity, things usually follow real-world logic to an impressive degree, resulting in one of the most fully realized playgrounds ever created.
What's even more breathtaking is that the game juggles these mechanics and the infinite ways players can take advantage of them without technologically breaking. In an era where it seems very few major video game developers can ship an open world game without a slew of performance issues, Tears is incredibly polished. In over 100 hours, I never encountered a single bug or crash that negatively impacted my experience with the game. The frame rate may dip below its targeted 30 frames per second when things get crazy, but it usually doesn't harm the overall package. With the groundbreaking gameplay on display, you forgive the small visual issues.
Every quest feels uniquely personal, making Tears one of the best games to talk about with friends or read about on social media, as you'll see dozens of puzzle solutions and personal journeys completely different from what you did yourself. And the failures are just as fun and memorable as the successes.
Through my 100 hours exploring Hyrule (so far), I've been consistently surprised by brand new enemy species, fun costumes for Link to wear and deeper side quests with stronger characterization that make Tears of the Kingdom's Hyrule feel like a much more lived-in place than Breath of the Wild's ever did. Even after all that time, I'm still eager to jump back into the skies, surface and depths of Hyrule to see what unexpected journey the game has in store for me next. ♦
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM
