UnderwaterFunktown

User Score
9.5

Presentation - 9.0
Gameplay - 9.5
Value - 10

(Note this was originally going to be a slideshow based review, so if it comes off a little funky that's definitely why. But that's on-brand so it's ok)

Welcome to the first ever instalment of Funktown Reviews; great to see you again!

Today’s subject and first game I’ll be reviewing is a little title called The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which happens to be the direct sequel to another little game called The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Now, it’s safe to say that Breath of the Wild was fairly well received when it came out in 2017, in fact it was lauded by many as one of the best games of all time. So as one would expect, expectations were pretty high for its sequel, including my own. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that 3D Zelda is one my favorite game series and Breath of the Wild was as far as I’m concerned, the best entry yet, so leading up to Tears of the Kingdom, I was definitely aboard the hype train. So much so that I even picked up the massive Collector’s Edition; a box so big it could fit 3 normal collector’s editions and 500 grams of pasta.

And so, with expectations as high as the game’s sky islands could the end product itself possible live up to them? That’s what we’re here to answer today … 6 months after the game’s release. Exactly when you’d need that information.

But before we get into the bulk of the review I want to first talk about the story, or rather talk about the fact that I’m not gonna talk about the story, at least not in detail. All you need to know is that I… liked it. I thought it had some strong elements to it, particularly the ending which is one element that I was just a teeny bit underwhelmed by in Breath of the Wild. It did definitely have some issues like a repetition of elements (ancient sages anyone?), but overall, I would definitely still say I enjoyed it and that it holds up to other Zelda stories in my eyes. But regardless, while the story of course takes up some space this it isn’t a game where it’s the main focus and not nearly as much of a bearing element as the gameplay or the world, which is the main focus of this review, starting with the very basics.

(Btw I lied about the little part, this will be one long review).

The Basics

Most of this review will be spent talking about what sets Tears of the Kingdom apart from its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, but to first set the stage game I gotta talk about the things they have in common, namely, the basics.

The combat, material gathering and cooking, weather and temperature mechanics and the ways you can move about the world, climbing, gliding or shield surfing; these were all core elements of Breath of the Wild and a large part of what made it an amazing game. I even liked the dreaded durability mechanic, because it added more variation to the gameplay and a sort of strategic weapon management. These elements are all back in Tears of the Kingdom and largely unchanged, there are of course new materials with new uses and elements that spice of the combat, but we’re dealing with the same basic blueprint here, and even to some extent the same world map, which we’ll get back to. And despite Breath of the Wild being as beloved as it was, this long list of similarities has been a point of contention among some players, even some of those who loved Breath of the Wild. Personally, I think a large part of the that is the fact that it’s been 6 whole years since Breath of the Wild, and with such a large time span people expected a bigger transformation, even from a direct sequel, and I can sort of relate to that.

But the other side of the coin is that many other players are happy to have a new massive game that shares so much with Breath of the Wild and builds on top of it, and I find myself mostly in this second camp. Sure, one of the weaknesses of this approach is that many things that could have been improved over Breath of the Wild are instead left the same, but overall, these core elements’ return are a welcome one and once again a huge part of what makes the game great. For those who have played BotW there’s no denying that Tears of the Kingdom is a revisit on many levels, but I for one don’t think it’s a case of too much of a good thing. Particularly not when there’s also so many, many things that set the games apart and even smaller introductions to the basics like the new materials or the expanded midair moveset are really fun and welcome additions.

The World

As hinted at earlier Tears of the Kingdom builds off the same surface world map as Breath of the Wild and despite various changes to landmarks and locations there’s no denying this makes the act of exploring Hyrule proper a little less exciting this time around. However, they did a lot more with the world than just freshen up Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule map; they put it in a sandwich. The top slice is the sky islands waay above the surface as the bottom part is the Depths, way down in the darkness below. Both distinctly different from the surface.

As one would expect the sky islands are full of robots, catapults and death stars and very, very yellow. Since they’re these self-contained unique areas way up in the sky, exploring them and trying to find ways to reach them is extremely compelling particularly early in the game, and skydiving down from them to the world below is a blast. On top of that these sky areas frankly look amazing. Graphically Tears of the Kingdom is of course not the most advanced game out there, but like Breath of the Wild before it, I think it manages to look pretty damn good despite that due to its style, particularly here up in the sky with its golden colors and crazy lighting.

Moving on to the dark depths below these are also a really interesting new segment with unique challenges of trying to light up the areas to navigate them and avoiding gloom and gloom monsters that’ll lock away your hearts. With Hyrule feeling more familiar and a little smaller due to new mechanics, I would say the depths end up partially taking over the role of a new frontier to explore the way that Hyrule felt in Breath of the Wild, definitely nice to have that, but I also can’t deny that the depths aren’t quite a replacement of the same caliber with the areas feeling a lot less varied that the Hyrule above. I’m also not sure how to feel about Gloom as a mechanic since you can fairly easily create food that cures it which ends up making it feel not that different from taking regular damage except you gotta remember to stock up on those specific foods.

Going back briefly to meat of the sandwich, Hyrule itself, while I won’t talk about that at great length here, it shouldn’t be understated that that is still a fantastic and vaired part of this game and with caves, wells and monster fortresses there’s also lots of new areas and nocks and crannies to explore here.

So ultimately what we’ve got here is a pretty solid sandwich, delicious even one could say. There is also A LOT here, it would be no exaggeration to say the game is more than twice as big as Breath of the Wild and while you could argue that space doesn’t quite get fully utilized, it still makes for a very compelling world that gets my stamp of approval.

And while we’re on the topic I would be remiss to not also mention that it’s not just the map in which TotK is massive, also in terms of content is it an increase. Compared to Breath of the Wilds 76 side quests originally, Tears of the Kingdom launched with 199. Of course, quantity does not always equal quality, but it’s still worth mentioning just how much of Tears of the Kingdom there is in Tears of the Kingdom (a lot) and while that can make it daunting for the would-be completionist, I personally feel the quality of quests has generally held strong and it does make Tears a hell of a package.

Runes vs “Runes”

One of the biggest things that sets TotK apart from its predecessor is the new “runes” (which aren’t officially called runes this time around, but eh, they’re runes), particularly since they play a much bigger role in this game. In BotW the runes served as a little set of extra abilities, a little spice on top of Link’s regular move set which only became truly essential in shrines, but in TotK the runes are an absolutely integral part of the gameplay, particularly two of them: Ultrahand and Fuse.

Ultrahand is quite clearly an evolution of Magnesis from BotW that let you move around metal objects, and unless you really like pretending to Magneto it’s pretty clearly an upgrade. Ultrahand lets you not only move around all types of objects, not just metal, it also lets you stick objects together creating potentially massive constructions or chains of objects. By itself that’s already a pretty cool ability, but that’s only scratching the surface of its potential thanks to the newly introduced Zonai devices, unique objects like cannons, wheels or fans that can be carried in your inventory and brought out when you need them. With these in hand you can create basicly anything your heart desires; your own vehicles from a boat, to a car, to a stick with wheels and so much more that it doesn’t even make sense for me to try and list it. Essentially this ability is like a damn Arduino kit letting you couple together contraptions to your hearts content (only more intuitively). It’s like a game within the game and can be extremely fun to experiment with.

Then there’s the fuse mechanic which is perhaps even more vital to the game. Weapons are generally pretty awful by themselves in Tears of the Kingdom since anything that isn’t a stick has been degraded by the gloom, but fuse makes up for that by letting you combine your weapons with various materials increasing both damage and durability. This can be used on anything from crafting materials to Zonai devices or even other weapons. You can also fuse things to your shield or, one of the best uses, fusing to your arrows when shooting, which lets you manually create not only, fire, lighting and bomb arrows, but a ton of other things as well. It really an extremely versatile tool letting you create anything from useful to the... ehm... practical.

But really though like Ultrahand it strikes a great balance between a super useful cool tool and one that you can have fun and mess around with.

Now I did say Ultrahand and Fuse were the two most important of the new runes but that doesn’t mean the remaining two are any less awesome. Ascend lets you jump straight up and dig through surfaces above you like some sort of Olympian mole, appearing on top to surprise enemies or just as an extremely useful type of traversal. Recall makes objects move back in time and while it’s use outside of puzzles is frankly a bit limited by itself it is the key to one of games greatest features. THE AIR TAXI. Letting you climb abord rocks fallen from the sky and get a lift straight up into the stratosphere. Seriously it took me a little while to discover this feature but once you do you OWN the skies. Combine this with the other types of vertical traversal and I’d say if you’re not descending on your enemies like an ominous eagle in this game then you’re doing it wrong.

But well that sums up the runes in Tears of the Kingdom and in case you couldn’t tell this is where the game really shines. While the runes in Breath of the wild were pretty cool and I did miss the free bombs a little as first, the runes in TotK are simply game changing and at least in my eyes on a different level. These along with Zonai devices and other new mechanics really come together to make TotK a powerhouse of creativity where you’ll often try out things you have no idea if will work. If it does it’s awesome and if it doesn’t it’s often pretty damn funny regardless. In other words, it turns TotK into a master of gameplay related surprise and that is one of the main reasons the game can stay fun for dozens or perhaps hundreds of hours.

Exploration and Shrines

It would be no exaggeration to say that exploration was a massive part of what made Breath of the Wild as good as it was. Having this massive world where the landmarks you saw on the horizon where places you could eventually make your way to really gave a drive to see everything the world had to offer. It also had this special atmosphere of being a lone warrior traveling an unknown and mostly empty world with only small specks of civilization and getting to know it little by little. This was also quite directly a gameplay mechanic, starting with an empty map and slowly filling it out by finding Sheikah towers, and both these towers and the shrines made for some extremely effective goals as you explored the world, you could spot their orange glow from far away, potentially mark them on your map, and then set off towards them. Combine this with the different types of traversals available to you and it made exploring Hyrule little at a time a really compelling experience.

If we then look to Tears of the Kingdom and it’s points of interest on the map, there’s a major difference this time around. They’re green now. Yes, the shrines of course make their return and Hyrule has also gotten some wicked tattoos since last time related to the story, and of course you’ve once again some type of Sheikah tower, except this time they fire you off like a cannon which is pretty fun and a really quick way to get around. And I suppose we can also add caves and wells as new points of interest for you to look for and explore around the world, which are nice additions for sure though they don’t really pop in quite the same way when surveying the landscape.

A major difference for exploration this time around however is the new ways to get around. As mentioned before Ultrahand can be used to create vehicles of all shapes and sizes and some of the other runes also give you extra tools for traversing the world and these are all really fun ways to move about the world, but it also makes it A LOT easier, perhaps too easy.

When you look at the surface map of Tears of the Kingdom, the number of shrines and obviously the size of it are similar to that of Breath of the Wild, but the new options for traveling on land or in the sky make it not only easier to get around and to fill out your map, but much easier to find shrines as well. So even though Breath of the Wild actually had the same number of shrines on the surface it felt like there was further between them and that in turn made them feel more special. In Tears of the Kingdom most of the shrines are almost trivially easy to spot and get to and that definitely diminishes the sense of discovery, even if the shrines themselves are still great for the most part. And in the same way these new traversal option coupled with the more familiar world sort of take away the atmosphere of the lone explorer the first game had, even if there’s definitely also a lot to be said for Link the Sky King or Link the Mad Scientist. But moving back to shrines, the reason I’ve kept saying the two games have the same number of shrines on the surface is of course that Tears of the Kingdom also has quite a few up on the sky islands and that means it has even more in total.

Comparing the two games Breath of the Wild had 120 shrines pre-DLC while Tears of the Kingdom has 152. This also means the total number of hearts has been increased from 30 to 40, as you still get rewards for all shrines, so Link can end up even beefier in this game that the already pretty massive 30 hearts in BotW. But the number of shrines isn’t nearly as important as what those shrines contain and the shrines in both games can generally be divided into certain types. That’s right it’s time to get stastical.

BotW had 71 shrines with varied puzzles and this was definitely the best type, with that many they can’t of course all be winners, but generally speaking the puzzle shrines were great and very creative. Then there were 20 fairly repetitive Tests of Strength where you had to fight guardians of various strength, but there was far enough between them that I didn’t mind it terribly and finally 29 “Blessings” which meant that you just got the reward for free after entering the shrine, however that often meant it was getting to the shrine that was puzzling or challenging and some of them were pretty great.

In Tears of the Kingdom there’s 79 puzzle shrines and these are still great, if anything maybe slightly better than Breath of the Wilds puzzles, at least a few of them. Then there are 15 Proving Grounds where you start off with no gear and have to take down a number of enemies and these are also quite fun and each one is unique so you could see them as an upgrade over the Tests of Strength. However, this is where things get iffier. Tears of the Kingdom has 9 Shrines of the Combat Training variety which quite literally are just tutorials teaching you the controls. Now I know people have very varied opinions on tutorials and I’m not among the ones that have a lethal allergy to them, but there’s two problems with them in this case.

1. A) All of the things these tutorials teach you are mechanics that come from Breath of the Wild, and let’s be honest, probably two thirds of players or more have played that game previously. If one of these two games warranted these types of shrines it would have been the first.
2. B) These shrines are just kind of randomly placed around the world so by the time the player reaches it, it might either be kind of late to teach them that or they quite likely have already figured it out.

In conclusion: these don’t really serve any purpose. And then there are the “Blessings” which there’s a massive 51 of this time with most of them being up in the sky and with the outside “puzzle” being getting a green crystal to the Shrine location. The blessings weren’t really a bother in the first game even if I preferred the puzzle Shrines, but when there’s this many of them and most of them follow this crystal formula that mostly only feels like a challenge the first couple of times, then they end up getting pretty stale.

Which brings me to my perhaps mildly surprising take on Shrines in Tears of the Kingdom: There’s too many of them. Combine the fact that the shrines are easier to spot and get to with the fact that a some of them ends up feeling like filler and I honestly believe the game would have benefitted from just cutting a portion of them (The Combat Training ones and half the Blessings would suffice) and going for 120 like Breath of the Wild, including the sky ones. And yes, this would mean the health limit had stayed at 30 and once again, I kind of think that would have been better. It was already pretty ridiculous how much you scale in BotW from 3 hearts and up to 30, pushing it all the way to 40 seems kinda pointless, particularly since pretty much anything in the game is manageable with half that or less. But well, that’s just my take and even if I do wish the game had less shrines, they’re still a great part of the game, make no mistake about that.

Temples and Sages

Temples or dungeons have been a big part of the Zelda series through its entire history and in BotW these dungeons took the form of the Divine Beast. Massive moving structures that you could climb abord and then find a dungeon, of sorts, inside it with an interactive map that even let you move parts of the beast around. To me they were pretty cool, if not quite the most compelling dungeons the series had to offer and indeed a number players didn’t feel they really felt like Zelda dungeons. However, with TotK that was all set to change with the reintroduction of Temples which turned out to be… pretty much the same as the Divine Beasts. Okay, to be fair you could maybe call them a halfway step between classic dungeons and Divine Beasts, since they have unique bosses each and more traditional layouts and maps, but the thing that makes them still feel most like the Divine Beasts is that they like the beasts have an open structure and give you five objects to find in any order you like.

This sounds like a nice thing on paper and honestly I don’t think it’s bad by any means, but it’s a vastly different feeling from old Zelda dungeons were you slowly progressed through the dungeon getting access to more and more spaces by opening up locking doors, here the whole thing is like the game itself, open, combine that with the lack of mini bosses or, perhaps one of the best part of old Zelda dungeons, getting access to new tools and you’re left with something that’s by no means bad, but less memorable and undeniable a smaller part of the overall game experience than it has traditionally been. And if that sounds like a harsh criticism it isn’t really, BotW and TotK have chosen to focus more on the massive world and the dozens of smaller shrines rather than a few big dungeons and of course that means they’ll end up playing a smaller role and there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. It’s a different approach, but the overworld and dungeons are still really great in my eyes even if the balance of power has shifted between them. That doesn’t mean things have to stay that way for all Zelda games going forward though, but that’s a topic for another time. It’s also worth noting that while the dungeons themselves aren’t always the most memorable in these two games, the process of getting to them sometimes is and that definitely also counts for something.

But that’s enough talk about the dungeons, now let’s focus on what you get for completing them. Breath of the Wild had four champions powers that you unlocked in each Divine Beast and these functioned almost like passive abilities for Link, activating when you did certain things, but generally blending pretty naturally with regular gameplay, except perhaps Revali’s Gale (which was awesome though).

In Tears of the Kingdom things are a little different since you get not only powers but the Champions themselves as followers. I mean sages, I mean ghosts of sages. The point is they actually follow you around and fight alongside you in battle. Which is… a mixed pleasure. Fights turn a lot more chaotic with them around and you do kind of play a smaller role yourself, but they are quite useful and it’s kind of cool to have a little entourage. But as hinted at the Sages still have abilities for you to use as well and these are pretty awesome to be honest. Except. For the way you use them. To activate and ability you have to be next to the champion with that ability and press the A button, which not only makes them tough to use them in the middle of battle when they run around, it also makes it very easy to use them accidentally. The only Sage that kind of doesn’t have this problem, at least the first part, is Tulin who will automatically stay next to you whenever you’re in the air giving you easy access to his ability, all of the others however are frankly VERY far from optimal in how you use them. To be fair the game already has a fairly full control scheme but there’s was definitely still better ways to do this. My idea would be placing the abilities on the D-pad when you hold down ZL to shield, because you don’t really need to be able to switch weapons or shields while shielding. But that’s just one option, there could be many others.

Unfortunately, we’re not done with the sage/companion section yet, because there is in fact one more… thing… that will follow you around in this game. The Owlbot. This big ol’ robot is unlocked relatively late in the game and lets you fuse materials or Zonai devices to its hand or back to sort of build a custom robot. You can even climb on its back and control it yourself. That all sounds pretty awesome, right? Well, it’s not.

The problem with the owlbot is that by the time you get it, it is pathetically weak compared to sort of weapons you can fuse for yourself, even if you fuse some of your strongest materials to it, it falls short of Link’s own potential due to low base damage and clunky movement, and if you do end up doing that, they would have been better spent on your own weapons anyways. And when the bot is weaker than yourself, climbing aboard it and controlling it instead of fighting by yourself is like putting Iron Man inside a tank. Everybody loves a good tank you might say, but not when it’s literally just a downgrade from the suit you’re wearing.

(And the iron one). And the owlbot doesn’t even add a layer of protection like a tank would, you straight up take damage to your own health when the robot does and since it’s much harder to block or avoid while on it, that really cements its uselessness. To top it all of it if you should unfortunately find yourself on the back of the owlbot, it even asks for confirmation to dismount it, like a damn “are you sure message?”. Even getting off the damn thing is a rough experience.

Now to be fair you can potentially do some fun with the bot it if you’re just messing around and it can function as a sort of vehicle to get around given the right Zonai devices, but even then, the potential there is just a lot more limited than what you can do with Zonai devices by themselves.

So yea overall, the owlbot isn’t a great feature and probably the games worst. It is of course a very small part of a massive game, one that you don’t really have to do anything with if you don’t want to, but it’s still a damn shame to have such a clunky and kind of pointless feature in here. Now, how would I fix it if it was up to me? Frankly what I think I would do, in an attempt to fix several issues at once, since the number of followers is already a bit overwhelming at times, would be to limit things so the sages are only available above the surface. That way the Depts get to be this dark mysterious area you explore all alone, until you unlock the owlbot late in the game which would then only be available in the depths and made significantly stronger in all areas. Even stuff like how fast it can run with a fan attached, make it your one powerful tool in the depths where you’re otherwise alone. Either that or scrap it all together, honestly works for me as well.

But well, we are nearing the end of the road, having covered pretty much all the major elements of Tears of the Kingdom and talked about its strengths and its weaknesses, but I do have one little segment left which I like to call the Master List of minor flaws. All the little annoyances that I don’t see as huge problems, but which are still worth throwing out there. Some unique to TotK and some that carried over from BotW. Let’s go

• Ultrahand is awesome, buuut admittedly a bit clunky in regards to rotating objects.
• In a game that strongly encourages experimentation with different contraptions it is frankly somewhat devastating that they disappear upon reload.
• Scrolling through every single material you have in a straight line when wanting to fuse things to an arrow is pretty rough. Sorting by most used ones helps, but isn’t a perfect solution.
• When you’re locked on to an enemy you can’t change targets with the right stick like you can in many other games. I guess it’s a design choice to give you full camera controls instead, but when there’s multiple enemies coming at you, and there usually is, I definitely miss a quick way to change targets.
• Having change weapons and change bows on the same button depending on whether you’re holding down ZR feels a little dumb when you could have thrown bows on the D-pad down slot. Yes, I know it’s used for calling your horse, which was somewhat useful in BotW, but in this game with vehicles and air taxis and what have you, calling your horse is just not important enough to take up a button space at all times.
• And finally, while I’m not the biggest critic of the pausing to heal system, without any limitations to speak of it does become a bit ridiculous since you can just bring a whole damn buffet into battle and become unstoppable.

So, with all that being said, all that’s left now is to give the game my final verdict, and like all worthwhile verdicts it takes the form of a number between 1-10. And what I give The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is… a 9.5/10, only half a point from maximum score. That might seem odd considering how many points of criticism I had, but I wouldn’t be a real reviewer if I couldn’t complain endlessly about something I love. Of course, a score of 9.5 isn’t supposed to imply the game is 95 % perfect, nowhere close, but despite the flaws to say that Tears of the Kingdom is my favorite game in several years would not be an exaggeration, the good parts are just that good, and I think that deserves that high a score.

And going back to the question we asked at the beginning “did the game manage to live up to the incredible hype?” to me at least the answer is: yes …but. As high as the high points of this game are, both figuratively and literally, I do think it ended up with more little issues that one could have hoped for. There are of course always gonna be issues in a game of this scope and Breath of the Wild undeniably had several as well, but with this being an iterative sequel that built on top of BotW I don’t think it was unrealistic to hope for fewer rough edges this time around, and if anything, we might have ended up with more. So ultimately Tears of the Kingdom ends up as a what I would call a flawed masterpiece, just like I considered Breath of the Wild, and so the question that remains is which game is better?

And I would give that question a resounding… dunno? I really do think the two games were about equal when all is said and done with BotW having stronger atmosphere and exploration and Tears of the Kingdom having more fun and unique gameplay, but both games do excel in both areas so it’s not a massive difference. Though I will note in this comparison that Tears of the Kingdom is already the one I’ve put the most hours into by now and that number’s only gonna rise. Again, quantity ain’t quality so that doesn’t make it a better game as such, but it will probably end up being a bigger experience for me, if that makes sense.

But when all is said and done the point is that to me Tears of the Kingdom is an amazing game despite its flaws, one that I would consider among the best I’ve ever played, and in the end, if there’s just one thing you should take away from this review it is the following:

You could fit A LOT of pasta in that box.