Tears of the Kingdom First Impressions

Last week, we published our review on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. We highlighted how that game did the main thing a sequel should do: build and expand upon the original. This week, we’re publishing our first impressions of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, sequel to Breath of the Wild.

The iconic Switch launch title that GQ just listed as the greatest game of all time. Quite a shame GQ didn’t wait until now, because even after one weekend, we clearly see how Tears of the Kingdom does exactly what we said Survivor does to the previously proclaimed greatest game of all time.

Writer’s Note: Some early story and general gameplay spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom.

Tears of the Kingdom Massively Expands Hyrule’s Size

Anyone who thought Breath of the Wild was a big game was correct. Hyrule was massive. Now imagine that you could also explore a giant underground area like Skyrim’s Blackreach and sky islands. You don’t have to imagine, because Tears of the Kingdom does that.

Thanks to Zelda and Link’s spelunking, numerous chunks of the land sprung up from Hyrule and now float throughout the sky. Where Wind Waker famously made Link a sailor, Tears of the Kingdom makes him a sky sailor.

By the way, those chunks left behind gaping holes in the ground, which lead to a long forgotten underground area called The Depths. As expected, it’s really dark down there. Unless you have Brightbloom Seeds you’ll be stuck in near pitch-black darkness.

Their presence isn’t what’s so striking, however, it’s their sizes. Sky islands have numerous things to do, ranging from Shrines to mini-bosses, to various side quests. What caught us the most so far, however, has been the main Temples.

Players Get Incredible Vertical Gameplay

While we’re not trying to mainline this game, but we did finish our first Temple. As good as the Temple (and the Temple Boss fight was), we were more struck by the climb up there.

The temple was in the sky, at the top of a series of floating chunks. To get there, we had to use Link’s new ability, Ascend, to shoot straight up through some chunks. Link’s new abilities let him climb vertical areas much quicker than before. Add in sections like this where we felt like we scaled a cylinder from the inside, and you have remarkable level design.

Creativity Has No Bounds in Tears of the Kingdom

Speaking of new abilities, Fuse will be every tinkerer’s new best friend. Link can connect any loose object to whatever he’s wielding at the time for wild results. If you find an old mine cart and Fuse it to your shield, Link gets a skateboard.

Then, Link can also use building blocks scattered throughout Hyrule to build whatever he wants. Horse-drawn carriage is easy enough (especially since you can get a connecting harness for your horse to wear).

What about flying blocks? Well, thanks to device dispensers, you can get additional building pieces from Ancient Hyrule. These dispensers have hot air balloons, gliders, flamethrowers, etc.

Tears of the Kingdom gives players the materials and the skillset to build to their hearts content. Expect to see multitudes of social media posts about people’s sick new creations.

Once Again, Legend of Zelda Sets a New Bar

Nintendo’s famous dungeon crawling franchise arguably stands as the greatest video game series of all time. Ocarina of Time signaled a generation turn towards dungeon and puzzle exploration in the late 90’s. Breath of the Wild reworked how we imagine open-world gameplay. Now, Tears of the Kingdom pushes that envelope astronomically higher.

Even though we’re far from done with this game, Zelda immediately entered Game of the Year and Greatest of All Time discussions…again.