Tears of the Kingdom: Is Nintendo's Latest Legend of Zelda Game All It's Cracked Up to Be?
By Graham S.
Retro Game Console Pattern by NotjungCg created in Canva
2023 has been an excellent year for video games. With many extremely popular and well-made releases such as Lethal Company by Zeekers, Spider Man 2 by Insomniac, or Baldur’s Gate 3 by Larian, gamers have been spoiled by the wide variety of high-quality video games that have been coming out this year. However, Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (or TOTK for short) has been hailed by some as the best game of the year. But what makes the game so good, and does it have any flaws?
TOTK’s main highlight is its incredibly expansive and well fleshed-out world. Around every corner is an enemy camp, hidden area, encounter with friendly characters, or odd location. The beautiful animation compliments the fascinating environments and characters extremely well, as does the amazing soundtrack, which is orchestral, but with elements such as reversing certain instruments or adding distorted voices in the background to make it feel unique.
In addition to its excellent atmosphere, the overall mechanics are great as well. Combat is smooth, satisfying, and visually flashy and cool. Combat also is enhanced by the Fuse ability, allowing you to add effects and damage increases to weapons. In the place of the Runes that were used in the previous game, there are new abilities that allow you to build vehicles, devices, structures, fuse items to weapons, traverse your way through ceilings, and even rewind time.
Tears of the Kingdom’s story is somewhat convoluted, involving several interesting twists and story beats, although a few aspects sometimes don’t feel as well thought out. There will not be any major spoilers in this article, but it is recommended you hunt for the optional cutscenes known as “Dragon Tears” which explain much of who certain characters are and why certain things happen. However, these are not necessary to advance the story.
TOTK’s one major flaw is “The Depths,” a vast, expansive, underground region that spans the entire map. While it is a very interesting concept, and it has its fair share of interesting details, lore, useful items, and quests, it is a nightmare to navigate. There is almost no natural light in the vast caverns; therefore, players must bring their own sources of light with them in the form of Brightbloom seeds or torches. However, Brightbloom seeds tend to run out quickly unless you have a lot of them and cannot be reused, and torches fill one of your precious weapon slots and cannot create light when climbing, swimming or sprinting, which makes movement slow and arduous. On top of that, it is an extremely weak weapon, but unequipping it and replacing it with a stronger weapon takes away your light, giving you a major disadvantage. Fortunately, players will only have to venture into the depths for extended periods of time towards the end of the game and will hopefully be prepared.
Tears of the Kingdom has also been discussed among the students of NorthStar. It was the subject of much conversation in the Video Games group chat, particularly in the week of its release. It is generally regarded extremely positively by the students, as shown in the words of Nellie; “I thought it was an awesome game, great graphics, and fun puzzles to figure out.”
Ultimately, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an excellent game that is well-deserving of all of the approval it receives, with the only major flaw that occurs briefly towards the end of the game. TOTK certainly meets and exceeds the expectations that fans had when it was announced and is a sign that Nintendo will hopefully continue to deliver games of quality in the future.
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Graham S. lives in Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has been studying at Northstar for two years and is in tenth grade. He enjoys reading, writing, video games, Dungeons and Dragons, and Warhammer 40k. He hopes to one day be an author but currently is enjoying being a journalist for the Navigator.