Tears of the Kingdom
A masterpiece that I enjoyed more than its predecessor
The hard part about evaluating media is that one’s reaction is inseparable from the moment. I’ve lost count of the albums I shrugged off once, but loved listening to later in life. Or who doesn’t have nostalgia for a book or a movie from your childhood, which in hindsight isn’t that good?
So when I say I enjoyed Tears of the Kingdom more than Breath of the Wild, it makes me wonder if it’s actually better, or if better circumstances surrounded my experience?
This year, the house has been alive with Hyrule chatter: my kids are playing Breath of the Wild for the first time, and my wife is deep into trying to 100% Tears of the Kingdom herself. So my playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom became a family event, and that shared energy is impossible to separate from the game itself.
By every metric, Tears of the Kingdom is phenomenal: 95/100 Top Critic Average and 100/100 player rating on OpenCritic. I agree. It hooked me early on the Great Sky Island and didn’t let go. One-hundred forty hours disappeared in just under three months. Saturday mornings were spent with the kids in front of the TV, solving shrines and making my kids laugh with ridiculously-built contraptions.
While admittedly, there is a fair amount of repetition throughout the game (like helping Addison put up signs), I found it very balanced in terms of keeping things fresh. I never felt forced to grind, and there was always something else to be doing. The next time I saw Addison, I was always happy to help again.
One potentially controversial thing I did that might have helped: I looked up a spoiler-free guide so I knew what order to tackle things in. While I know it’s an open-world game you can do in any order, I really appreciated being pointed in the optimal direction. This helped me pick up the story in the right order, and I felt like I was continuously making progress instead of wasting time.
A few concrete improvements that stuck with me:
- New abilities — While I miss my unlimited bombs, the new abilities are super fun to use
- Weapon durability — Still not a fan of the durability system, but either it’s not as bad or I’m just used to it now. Also Fuse makes the weapons largely interchangeable. Decoupling arrows and ingredients also keeps my quiver tidy
- Story — I think the story was better, although perhaps this is just recency bias
- Shrines — They felt overall easier to accomplish, less head-banging
Of course valid criticisms abound. The map is mostly recycled, but then ballooned skyward and downward with little visual variety (plus a sprawling cave system everywhere). The volume of content borders on overwhelming. Somehow every trace of the previous calamity has been quietly paved over, which seems odd if you think too hard about it. I didn’t try to 100% the game, so the repetition never burned me out.
The ending was also significantly more impactful than I remember Breath of the Wild being. Fortunately the kids were in bed and the wife fell asleep on the couch, so they didn’t have to see my embarrassing performance in battle. But I persevered somehow, and the culmination of the game was incredibly moving.
Are those the real reasons why I liked Tears of the Kingdom over its predecessor? Maybe. But context matters too. Five years ago when I played Breath of the Wild, my kids were much younger. My wife had already finished playing it, and the launch hype from 2017 had long faded. That game took me ~90 hours across six months, and in large part because I was playing by myself.
Maybe the sequel is better. But I think the real change was taking place around me.