Part of revisiting Nintendo’s classic Breath of the Wild in 2021 was to prep ourselves for the sequel. Well, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launched in May 2023.

The enormously ambitious title advances on the original in so many ways, often subtle but all-encompassing, it’s difficult to convey in this review. But we’ll have a bloody good go as this is a marvel and a masterpiece.

Bask in the Perfection of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Bearing in mind Breath of the Wild (which launched with the Nintendo Switch in 2017) is thought of as the best game ever and, yes, Nintendo was under immense pressure with its sequel.

The gaming giant rarely puts a foot wrong with its AAA releases, often redefining gaming in the process (as it has done consistently since the 1980s).

Tears of the Kingdom is goddamn triumph. Make no mistake. My god, where do we even begin with this thing!?

Nintendo sets the scene for what’s ahead with the jaw-dropping ascent to the Wind Temple (very early on in the game). This was just unbelievable. The build-up to this suggests you’re on a minor side quest, but before you know it you have to scale a towering structure.

Atop of that you speak to a character who instructs you onward.

And bloody hell does it get incredible from there, as you scale this vast and winding series of sky structures in your bid to just reach it. Halfway through this we realised just how vast this game is and what Nintendo has achieved here.

It is just mesmerising. It didn’t take long for it to be one of our favourite gaming moments ever.

But then you get the same thing but better for the approach to The Water Temple later on, with space hopping ultra-jumps and orbs of floating water carrying you around.

Away from these temples is the huge, sprawling world of Hyrule. The game is split across this and:

• The sky structures.
• The Depths (and eerie underworld beneath Hyrule).

You’re free to go off and explore everything. This is one huge world to look around, with added new cave sections (a bit like in Skyrim) that are often thrilling.

These vary in size. Some are tiny caves and others, to our disbelief, are enormous! They wind on down into the earth for acres and are intricate and bizarre. We found one under Hyrule castle and it was bloody enormous and took a solid hour to investigate.

What’s important to stress about these open-world Zelda titles is how Nintendo encourages players to take risks during exploration. As with the Wind Temple above, throughout we were convinced there was no possible way to do a certain thing.

You’ll ask yourself, “How do I do that? How do I get up there? That’s impossible.” You’ll think it through, have a go, and it works!

But the remarkable thing is Nintendo has designed the game to provide multiple routes towards completing something. There’s not a linear route to tasks, as you’ll find in most open world games like Red Dead Redemption II (2018).

As much as we like that game, it is very linear and there’s not much to do in the world around the main story (outside of going around shooting people).

The same for a classic like The Witcher 3 (2015), which now looks a bit pathetic in its game design compared to Tears of the Kingdom. That’s natural, games will develop over time and improve. Yet no one else has yet even dared to try and do what Nintendo has here.

This is the magnitude of what Nintendo has achieved with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

Such a sense of freedom is unparalleled in gaming.

Below is a sample of what you can get up to, but there really is just such a colossal amount going on it’s difficult to convey even a smidgen of everything.

The attention to detail is exquisite. In every single area of this map—including the lofty heights of the sky islands and the murky, disturbing depths of the underworld.

Every single area crammed with stuff to do and little intricacies that are a joy to behold. Every single quest or side-adventure or little moment packed with humour, wit, and wonder.

Downsides? Well, some gamers have complained about the graphics. Yes, this isn’t a cutting-edge PS5 type experience. But then why does it need to be? There’s pop-up and the draw distance for detail isn’t on the level of gaming competitors.

If anything, Nintendo has proven how irrelevant that all is. Mainstream gaming’s obsession with the very best graphics is redundant. This game turns up and shows why.

We think Tears of the Kingdom is arguably the greatest video game of all time and we’ll be playing it for at least another few 100+ hours yet.

The game met with instant critical acclaim with most publications providing top marks, including the legendary Famitsu magazine. In its 37-year history it’s only provided 28 games with a perfect 40/40 score. Tears of the Kingdom is the latest.

It sold 10 million copies within three days of launching, which is now over 20 million worldwide. And it’s fantastic to see something brilliant doing well.

Construct Stuff and Embrace Link’s New Abilities

One of the massive changes in Tears of the Kingdom over its predecessor are the new construction and fusing abilities.

The game encourages players to build all manner of stuff.

Basic fuse features let you combine weapons with things you stumble across in the game. Such as merging a stone with a sword so you can smash your way through boulders.

There are all sorts of ancient bits of machinery lying around, too, which you can connect together to build crazy structures. These let you traverse the Zelda world through flight or driving across land.

Your imagination is tested here. It’s down to you to try stuff out, construct, and see what you can come up with. Here’s a guide to this so you get an understanding of it.

It’s all great fun. You can attach anything to anything, really, such as several rockets to a plank of wood so you can go skyrocketing into the heavens.

Fans can be added to blocks of wood so you can launch yourself across water.

Another core new skill is the ascend ability, which you get early in the game. You can use this to launch Link (the protagonist) through objects above you.

This one is great fun, super useful, but also makes you think strategically. You look around the world for ways to launch yourself up objects.

It makes the flow of the exploration enjoyable and can get you out of tricky, or sticky, situations quickly.

For example, if you’re in some labyrinth cave system underground and lost… just ascend and you’ll pop up back in a more accessible area to continue exploring. Simple but brilliant.

Perching on the Anti-Nintendo Fence

The sad thing is there’s a sect of gamers who’ll refuse to play this wonderful title.

That may sound odd if you’re not a gamer, so we’ll explain. There’s a great deal of obstinate elitism a large sect of gamers have. Largely the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC sect who we come across all the time online. Their attitude is Nintendo’s games are beneath them on an intellectual and maturity level.

The ironic thing being it’s kind of childish behaviour to be like that.

For the sake of balance, we throw in the reasons why some people may skip the game. Such as with Dominik Diamond’s thoughtful opinion piece in The Guardian with Am I the only gamer who has no interest in Zelda? He notes:

“With every day that passes, thousands more words are written about Zelda’s brilliance. I have never felt more like a gaming outlier. I am so far on the wrong side of the zeitgeist I am about to come out the other end as inverse zeitgeist, ready to consume all of gaming culture into a supermassive black hole. I’m like a football fan who passes up on the World Cup. Someone who goes to Ikea and then only eats the meatballs.

Maybe I should just start playing the damned thing. But I’ve just remembered – I have to go to Ikea.”

In this he admits he hasn’t played a Zelda title since the Game Boy Link’s Awakening in 1993 and how he’s probably a “joyless sociopath” for avoiding the series ever since.

Mr. Diamond’s well measured piece isn’t the same as the “Nintendo’s games are for kids!” lot whining away in the comments section to that piece (and many others worldwide).

Some people just don’t like their status quo rattled.

Whenever Nintendo turns up and redefines gaming with another masterpiece (which happens every five years or so) these gamers have a bit of a temper tantrum as it seems to challenge their sense of elitism.

A fantastic game that’s not on the system they own and from a games developer they perceive to be silly and irrelevant. And so they’ve made it very clear, they refuse to even play the game (for the most inane, trivial reasons).

Ultimately, it’s their loss.

To deny themselves playing this life-affirming, most magical, charming of video games is to do themselves the biggest disservice as a gamer.