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Every good abstinent boy knows his Zelda games. And in the case of 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it was a pleasure to make its acquaintance. The latest game in the long-running series serves primarily as a sequel to 2017’s smash hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but never feels like a retread. In building upon the foundations that Breath of the Wild set (most notably in the case of asset reuse), Tears of the Kingdom is able to turn its focus towards engaging new game mechanics. The familiar “Sheikah Slate” abilities from Breath of the Wild are replaced here with new “Zonai Arm” abilities, and these bring a game-changing depth which its predecessors did not.
For example, the “Ultrahand” ability allows Link to manipulate a semi-destructible environment, sticking together various items to create bridges, walls, traps, vehicles, or anything else one can imagine. The idea of combination further extends into the “Fuse” ability, which gives Link the ability to fuse any of the hundreds of items present in the game to his equipment. For example, he might fuse a monster’s horn to a sword for a sharper swing, or fuse a mushroom to his shield for a puff of poison in an attacking enemy’s face.
These new abilities significantly heighten the gameplay potential of Zelda’s already expansive open world, though it should be noted – the complexity of the new abilities might create a learning curve a little steep for players new to the franchise, though as a follow-up to Breath of the Wild, the new mechanics feel at least somewhat intuitive.
Overall, I’d say that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a must-play on the Nintendo Switch. It takes all the elements that made its predecessor a masterpiece and expands them, going as far as to triple the size of the map, all without compromising the Switch’s hardware. Honestly it’s a miracle that the game was released on the aging system. This game is not only one of the best in the Zelda series, but one of the best games released in the last ten years.