The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Return to Hyrule

I was one of those people who bounced off the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a few times at first, but I eventually settled in and enjoyed the game as a wildlife photography simulator and cartography checklist. I didn’t expect to necessarily like TOTK, and there definitely are dumb design choices that bug me.

tl;dr It’s weird how a game that wants to be so beautiful and fun can be so bizarrely tedious but I have found things to enjoy.

Leave it to Nintendo to take every complaint about BOTW and then, out of hubris or spite or both, make those things twice as annoying in the sequel. The tutorial area is even more tedious than the plateau in the first game, the spacial controls for the building mechanic are annoying as shit, and they made the power selections wheel more stupid and clunky for no apparent reason. Arbitrary weapons decay remains. Talking to characters is just as annoying as it always has been, and if it rains while you’re climbing a mountain fuck you.

That being said, I’m glad I muscled past the starting area (I have never wanted anything as badly as I wanted the glider in those areas). This game effectively has three maps, adding sky and underground zones, along with a very handy ascend ability that allows the player to phase through ceilings and thus leave underground areas without having to climb back up. The fuse mechanic feels like Nintendo’s way of keeping randomized decay without having to admit it sucks, but I appreciate some of the more amusing fusion results, like my drumstick sword. I hate the spacial controls for building, but I’ve resolved to help the incompetent sign-holding guy whenever I see him, and this has been a way to slowly practice and get used to the controls with minimal frustration. I also hate the shrines, but this too may pass, as it did with the previous game. For now, I’m content to find ‘em all for the fast-travel options they provide.

I wanted to get back to wildlife photography ASAP, but didn’t have a camera. I looked it up and figured out I have to unlock the camera by doing a maybe not-obvious side quest (because of course I do) but this quest introduces the game’s very cool underground area, which must be lit up with brightblooms and is riddled with pulsing red gloom, so I got over my indignation and had fun dying there.

Overall, I’m glad I stuck with it and powered through the early parts. Now that I have access to my powers/items and the open world, I’m content to randomly explore and mostly not-die while occasionally building janky machines that are in violation of most safety codes but more or less do what they need to do. I’ve gotten into the habit of playing for a few minutes in the evening and I’m enjoying a loose and fancy-free playstyle.

Side Quest Heaven

I want to give credit where it’s due, because I was such a stinky little bitchard about now Nintendo is allegedly too stubborn to ever fix anything. I actually have noticed some nice QOL improvements:

• The new recipe book helps you remember recipes you’ve discovered. You have the option to look up a potion or food by recipe if you select one of the ingredients. This has encouraged me to experiment a bit more with cooking, and I’m actually having a lot of fun fusing weird things together.
• If you open a chest and your inventory is too full, you’re given the option of to drop items before you pick up the chest item.

My favorite thing right now is the mundane sidequests. I patched someone’s wagon and hitched a horse for them the other day, and the reward was negligible, but it was strangely satisfying. Many of the sidequests have been top-notch:

• I stumbled across the Gazette newspaper office. This opens a series of side quests that reward the froggy suit, which prevents slipping. I will try to fit this into my busy days of hoarding apples and catching bugs.
• It turns out there’s a lot of armors to be discovered via a great treasure hunting sidequest series, Misko’s Treasure. A fashionista bandit left cool armor in caves, and some of them require solving riddles. Wandering fashionistas and treasure hunters will give clues as to where to look. Accumulating and upgrading armor is extremely fun for me, and I am here for it.
• A weird little dude wants bubbl gems, and gives me weird cosplay stuff as a reward. He’s doing his best ok.
• Giant faeries demand music. Who am I to argue?

Treating Zelda like a cozy sim is continuing to work out for me.

FAEIRE

I sometimes search for topics like, “How to collect apples in Zelda,” and that is how I learned there’s an autobuild ability that can be found underground at Great Abandoned Central Mine and this can be used for clever and nefarious purposes.

I decided I would go there prematurely, and boy was I in for a surprise! Without spoiling anything (does it matter?) my fave is back, and is a badder ass than ever, so uh. I guess we’ll just deal with that later!

After continuing to die in dumb ways, because I’d barely upgraded my hearts or armor and one-hit deaths were distressingly common, I decided to embark on the great faerie quests and improve my duds. The great faeries are just as awesome as they were in the last game, but with 50% less sexual harassment. This questline has been one of my favorites, because it requires recruiting minstrels and transporting them while they scream and holler for you to slow down and stop making the ride so bumpy. They’re a bunch of crybabies; we always get there in one piece.

In the process, I’ve been digging into the Gazette questlines that are located at each stable. These are actually pretty fun and varied, and I enjoy them, and I enjoy diving into wells.

So, about Link and Zelda

Zelink, if you will. There was a meme floating around on Tumblr that was like, “THis is how Link lOoKs at Zelda” and it was just Link being utterly unemotive, as always, and someone replied to this by offering a comparison of pictures of Link eating food, which is quite literally the only time he seems to enjoy living.

As far as I can tell, Nintendo doesn’t want to commit one way or another. They want to have their cake and eat it too without even having to bake or ice anything. If I was gonna be generous, I’d say they’re leaving it open to interpretation so fans can enjoy a wide range of Zelink without the heavy hand of canon but here’s the thing–Nintendo hates fan interpretation and only wants you to do/say/think what they want you to do/say/think and it has always been this way so there’s no point in being generous.

In the previous game, the Zora chick was mildly obsessed with Link (understandable), and Link evidently rolled with that but it was impossible for me to tell if he was into her or if it was platonic for him or if it was a chaste romance or a diplomatic/political thing or what. I can’t tell what sort of assumption we’re supposed to be making in Tears of the Kingdom either, but Link seems to get uncomfortable when characters flirt with him and IDK man. I don’t see it. I think we should just let him enjoy his dubious food in peace. The Zelgan people are right, Zelda ought to tap that. She needs to fuck the bottom out of Ganon and Fix Him (which is impossible) and cause massive amounts of toxic drama for everyone. But clearly nobody in any of these games is ever getting laid, not even the horny giant faeries who no doubt awakened many size-kink fantasies and live rent-free in my brain. The smut writers of this fandom bear an unfortunately high burden.

Koroks in Space

I’ve continued roaming around completing side quests. Most recently, I filled out the full map and confirmed I’ve barely scratched the surface exploring though I’ve put over 50 hours into this game. I usually settle in for a 30 to 45 minute play session after work, which is generally enough time to find something new or die trying.

One of the main plots is to Find Zelda. Ask around and Zelda is seemingly everywhere asking people to do counter-intuitive things, like go into monster-infested caves naked or ignore strange ruins. Obviously this is an imposter and not really Zelda. I think the idea was to encourage players to get into the rich sidequest economy.

Mount Doom sucked the first time, but it sucks slightly less this time. One issue I have here (and elsewhere) is there are caves that are filled with excessive amounts of rock walls that must be broken, and this is primarily done with a sword fused to a rock. There’s one on Mount Doom so large I broke 5 rock weapons tunneling through it. Weapons decay makes a “puzzle” like this even more tedious. The devs understand this, but rather than Not Doing That, they make sure there are lots of rocks and swords lying around so you don’t have to constantly scrounge around for more rocks and swords which would be even more tedious. So thanks, I guess? But maybe we could have just skipped the excessive rock breaking part in the first place. (I say, even though swinging around a huge sword fused to a boulder is actually kind of therapeutic.)

In the plus column, there are a bunch of minecarts lying around and it has been good fun to hijack these and send a few koroks hurtling around the mountain. The first time was an accident, the rest were for personal enjoyment. I’ve since begun fusing rockets to koroks and launching them into space, which is fun and has been well-received by Donut.

On the sidequest side, I’m helping rebuild a coastal village (Hylian rice is proving to be a terrible bottleneck, but I’ve honestly enjoyed this one a lot) and I stumbled across a mayoral race and IDK what the hell is going on in Hateno but I need rice which they only stock in increments of 4 or 5 so I guess I’m here for it.

Yiga-Tastic

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or planned, but ever since I came across the Yiga Clan at the observatory the Yiga have been constantly underfoot. They disguise themselves as regular people but you can tell by the eyes and their general weirdness about bananas. They also leave around banana traps in the middle of nowhere, then act like I’m the biggest idiot ever when in fact I did it on purpose because I wanted to slap Yiga and/or set Yiga on fire and get a few extra swords. Now that I’ve learned there is Yiga Armor in this game I am ON THAT.

I helped rebuild a village! The later stages of this quest were kind of silly. You “help” with construction by chopping down a tree and placing it as a support beam. It was still fun and it has a lot of neat rewards. It turns out there’s a grassy field near Hateno where you can cut grass to reiably produce Hylian rice, and I was able to farm what I needed much more efficiently than waiting for the shop to restock.

What’s interesting about the side quests in this game is the rewards tend to be pretty neglibile, unless you’re going after Misko shrines, but I still find being given a plate of stewed tomatoes or whatever very rewarding. I really love that there are a billion armors to collect in this game, and I’m warming up to the fusion system.

OH, I almost forgot.

That happened. I approached what looked like a Great Faerie bulb and a Horse God popped out. I really, truly did not expect that. The Horse God is kind of a weirdo, but they can upgrade your horse and revive ones who have died. This is cool. The game reads your save files from Breath of the Wild, if you have any, and allows you to access those horses from a stable, which I thought was a nice touch.

Slippin’ On Out

One of the most annoying features of this game is slippery rocks, because it never fails to start raining when I want to climb some big thing. I was recently awarded the first part of the frog armor, and that is how I learned there are 3 levels of slip protection. So I can still slip, but chugging a few sticky frog potions helps.

The thought of doing enough side quests to get the rest of the frog armor made me go :P though. My interest is starting to wind down, which is fairly typical in open world games once I’ve put in around 60 hours. I didn’t start playing regularly until December and it absorbed most of my gaming attention for the past two months. I periodically returned to Breath of the Wild over the years, and I suspect I will do the same thing with this game. Hopefully next time I’ll be motivated to complete shrines and work on the main quests.

• Completing the map early had the unexpected effect of making exploration a bit overwhelming. If I had to do it again, I’d try to focus on exploring one area at a time, if only to make it easier to keep track of where I’ve been.
• I’ve discovered maybe half the shrines, but I still find them tedious and lack the patience to finish them. As a result, my heath/energy is still pretty low.
• Bizarrely, I kinda got into finding koroks! This game has a lot more variety of korok challenge, which is part of it. I’ve unlocked plenty of weapon/bow/shield slots (honestly, maybe too many, it takes a second to scroll through my weaposn now) so now I’m just collecting korok seeds for fun.
• There are 147 caves, and therefore 147 bubbul gems, and I’ve only found a fraction of them. I’ve unlocked maybe half the rewards. I didn’t realize there was a bubbul gem in each cave when I started playing, and I have no idea how many caves I explored without finding one.
• There are 12 geoglyphs and I’ve unlocked about half the memories.
• I’ve discovered maaaaybe 1/4 of the armors, if even.
• There are 58 wells and I’ve found about half.
• I’ve barely touched the sky portion of the game. Every time I launched from a tower, I would explore whatever sections were within gliding distance, but I honestly found this aspect of the game underwhelming and generally uninteresting compared to the underground/caves/wells areas.
• IIRC I’ve only undarked about half the underground area. I haven’t been down there in like a month.

Overall, I like this game better than the first one and I’ve enjoyed playing it, but I feel like the lackluster storytelling is a huge missed opportunity, and Nintendo keeps doing really annoying things from a design perspective that feel assholish and contrarian for no good reason.