Tears of the Kingdom: First Impressions

I’ve played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for about 12 hours and I’ve just completed the first dungeon so I figured I’d pull myself away from the game and share my initial (spoiler free) impressions.

I think it’s safe to say that if you liked Breath of the Wild, you’ll also like this because this is more BOTW. It’s a direct sequel and many features of BOTW carry directly into TOTK. Combat, cooking, korok seeds, shrines . . . all work (mostly) the same. Even the horses you had stabled in BOTW will transfer over to TOTK. Not your money though, unfortunately, or your perfectly completed Hyrule Compendium, which kind of sucks.

I understand that TOTK is designed for people who may not have played BOTW, and I understand the need to (literally) strip Link of gear, hearts and stamina at the beginning to reset everything for a new adventure, but I do kind of wish more stuff had transferred into TOTK from BOTW. Mostly I’m just salty about the Compendium.

The opening of TOTK is, structurally, almost identical to BOTW. You’ll begin in an enclosed tutorial area in which you’ll visit a handful of shrines and gain access to the key abilities you’ll need to complete your quest. Once you have those, you’re pretty much free to go where you want and tackle the content in any way that you want.

I would recommend following the main quest, at least at first, because your initial few missions will unlock your (essential) glider and the ability to reveal the map via the new sky towers. But, once those are out of the way, it’s really up to you. Like BOTW you’ll be directed to the four distinct regions of Hyrule each with a problem to solve but the order in which you tackle these is really up to you.

The game does suggest heading in one particular direction to begin so that’s the way I went. After retrieving one of my horses from BOTW I set out across the world, solved some shrines, explored some (new) caves, fused what looked like a dildo onto the end of my sword and eventually arrived at my destination and my first ‘dungeon’ and boss fight.

I say ‘dungeon’ but don’t expect a more traditional Zelda style dungeon. I’d say it’s closer to those than the Divine Beasts were in BOTW, but it’s still a more open ended approach to dungeon design that lets you use your abilities how you see fit to solve it. The boss fight was pretty fun too and felt uniquely themed and designed for this location. I’m assuming the other three bosses won’t just be a colour coded copy but their own unique thing. At least, I hope they are.

There’s a comfortable familiarity to TOTK and I’m really glad we’re getting a story that moves on from and builds upon the events of the first game. We get a chance to see how the world and characters have changed. I’m genuinely excited to return to locations from BOTW to see what’s new and to see what everyone has been up to.

But if you think this is just more of the same, you’re in for a shock. The world is bigger than before – much bigger – with new locations to explore both above and below. I won’t say more than that, but when you realise the scale of TOTK, it’s pretty f**king amazing. Nintendo must be f**king wizards to get this game running on a Switch.

The size of the world, the incredible draw distance, the realistic physics . . . and everything is so smooth and seamless. Yes, there are odd frame drops here and there but I can forgive those considering everything else. And your new abilities really do change everything. The way you fight, the way you traverse the world. They encourage creativity and I’m already seeing some pretty incredible creations being shared online. And laser dicks – because of course people will make laser dicks.

From a story perspective, I like what I’ve seen so far. It hits a lot of the same structural beats as BOTW, but it also builds upon those and I’m really curious to see where it goes. If it does follow the same pattern as BOTW then it may end being a little predicable, but maybe it won’t. Maybe it will surprise me.

Overall, I’m having a great time with TOTK but I don’t expect to finish it anytime soon. I hope to have the review up by the end of July, but we’ll see.