In the wake of breaking my shoulder from skiing, I have been doing quite a lot of one thing that doesn’t require moving my arm at all: console gaming. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was a godsend for releasing the very same week as my injury.
I have a history with Zelda. It ranks up there with Final Fantasy, Tales, and Chrono as one of my most personally beloved gaming franchises. As a grade schooler, Link to the Past was hands down my favorite game. As a middle and high schooler: Ocarina of Time.
After those two legends, I dabbled in Zelda here and there, but never really got hooked again. Until…
Breath of the Wild needs no introduction, but interestingly, I didn’t take to it immediately. It was just too open, and it took me a few attempts to be ready for it. I did come around though and now have easily 150 hours in the game.
Can Tears of the Kingdom be better?
My 200+ hours in ToTK says “yes or at least equal”. It has everything that was great about BoTW:
- Just gorgeous – how does a Switch game make PC/PS5/Xbox games look bad?
- So memable – it’s just hilarious what people get up to
- Very replayable – it’s very satisfying to play through once you know all the tricks for how to efficiently explore and power up
Add a crafting system, and you have a game that feels very different. It takes over the game, and that’s either a good or bad thing depending on your preference. Myself, I haven’t decided whether I prefer the purity of BoTW or the limitless potential of crafting in ToTK.
The Sandbox
ToTK is a sandbox game with a remarkably well thought out crafting system. Proof of this is r/HyruleEngineering, a subreddit of equal parts laughs and wonder. I quickly learned to adopt a craft-first mentality for both exploration and fighting in this game.
An efficient flying machine
Who needs a horse when you can just fly? Credit to several folks on r/HyruleEngineering for inventing this minimalist thing of beauty. I certainly was unable to come up with anything nearly as simple and elegant.
An extravagant machine for battle
Link fighting without a sword, shield, and bow is weird, almost un-Zelda-like. But it’s undeniably crazy fun fighting with crafted devices. Introducing The Battle Buggy!!!
A practical battle drone
While the Battle Buggy is entertaining, it is insanely expensive and is therefore best suited for critical moments (the Demon King’s Army) and memes.
I eventually found the value in engineering a far more practical device, one that could be summoned at will for run-of-the-mill enemy encampments. This drone only costs 9 Zonaite and rocks a 100+ damage weapon, leveraging the fact that auto-built weapons retain their damage and durability!
An aerial attacker
For clearing enemy camps in The Depths to mine zonaite, the previous contraptions have some downsides. The Battle Buggy will be defeated by tough terrain, which is common in The Depths. The cheaper battle drone is workable, but the cost of summoning it for each camp eats into profits. I find that once I have a fair bit of battery, it’s time to take to the air!
My house
Last but not least, you can build your own house in this game using the same crafting ability!
The Master Sword
To conclude a long, rambling, geeky post, I’ll leave you with a side-by-side of obtaining the Master Sword for BoTW and ToTK. One thing I don’t hear discussed enough is how good the piano work is in the music for both games