This article contains the plot introduction of "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", but there will be no content outside the official demo of "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom", so please feel free to read.
How many people beat as fast as I did when Link left the initial empty island, jumped down, and the text "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" appeared along with the background music?
TGA's 2022 Most Anticipated Game and Media Score of 97, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom responded to the expectations of players around the world with an undoubted debut.
Same everywhere, different everywhere
The warrior awakens, loses all his power, and under the guidance of the princess, he regains his abilities, defeats powerful enemies, and finally defeats the demon king and saves the world.
This is the story of "Breath of the Wild", but also the story of "Tears of the Kingdom", and if the restrictions are relaxed, it is also the story of every "The Legend of Zelda".
The sequel on consoles of the same generation gives "Kingdom Tears" and "Breath of the Wild" a lot in common: the same continent of Hyrule, the same timeline, and the same characters.
B button to accelerate, A key to interact, Y key to weapon, X button to jump, Kingdom Tears controls are exactly the same as the previous game.
So what's different about Kingdom Tears?
Nintendo is smart, and it knows that even today, Breath of the Wild is still the best in the open world: a huge, explorable world, an exquisite physical and chemical engine, plus a wealth of weapons, medicine, equipment, and even Kloeg's fruit. Give Breath of the Wild the confidence to give players all the abilities early in the game - Link who leaves the initial mesa has the strength to fight Ganon.
▲ Players can speed through "Breath of the Wild" in less than 30 minutes
So "Tears of the Kingdom" hardly changes any setting of "Breath of the Wild", only tweaks Link's skills.
Still full marks to get soft.
In my opinion, the changes in "Tears of the Kingdom" can be summed up in eight words: focus a little, reach the top.
As with Breath of the Wild, Link gets almost all of his abilities within the first 3 hours of the game (or even shorter if you don't mess around), and then the game tells the player the final goal.
It was this experience of less than 3 hours that completely rewrote the gameplay of Breath of the Wild.
In "Breath of the Wild", time standstill, time bomb, iron-absorbing stone, ice maker, the four abilities of the Hika Stone are played by the player.
In Kingdom Tears, the four abilities become Ultimate Hand (moving and gluing), Remnant Building (stitching equipment), Reverse Qiankun (Time Travel), and Babel (Crossing the Ceiling).
Question: How to climb a slippery cliff?
Breath of the Wild player: Stand still a stone, tap the accumulated kinetic energy, grab the stone and fly up.
Kingdom Tears player: Find three or five tree trunks and climb a ladder with your ultimate hands.
Question: How do I climb to the top of the waterfall?
Breath of the Wild player: Make a ladder with an ice maker and walk up step by step.
Kingdom Tears player: Use the ultimate hand to take off the stone slab on top of the waterfall and stand on the stone slab and turn it upside down.
Question: What should I do if the weapon is about to break?
Breath of the Wild players: Throw weapons, inflict critical damage, switch to the next weapon to fight.
Kingdom Tears players: Find stones, chests, mushrooms... Build from leftovers to give weapons a new life.
Question: How to get to the top of the mountain quickly?
Breath of the Wild players: Wait for the rain to stop or fly up with heroic blessings.
Kingdom Tears player: Drill into a cave and use Babel to reach the top.
…… ……
All the problems and challenges encountered in "Breath of the Wild" have new solutions in "Kingdom Tears". Even if it is still this continent, it is still full of unknowns and possibilities.
▲ Link's house is still here
Of course, the world of Kingdom Tears is not completely unchanged, the empty island provides a new space to explore, and the appearance of depth also makes it a lot easier to explore the running map in the early stage - in addition to walking and riding, gliding from the sky to the target location is also a good choice.
In "Breath of the Wild", from the five mythical beasts to the map tower, temple, and link's skills, all come from the Hika family, and the "technical guidance" of "Tears of the Kingdom" becomes Zonau, and in the north of Ferronita, there are ruins from Zonau.
▲ Photo from "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wilderness, Book of Masters"
However, both the game base and the official setting set mention this race, only saying that it is a "mysterious ancient tribe", and judging from the game, they seem to be good at building.
Perhaps you've seen a lot of videos of players living on social media, and I won't go into them here.
In short, you will be very convenient to get wheels, boards and other items in the game, as long as you have enough imagination, it is no problem to turn "The Legend of Zelda" into "The Legend of Segunda".
▲ The tram battery life is really not good
In addition to building, weapon bonding also brings a lot of innovative gameplay to Kingdom Tears. For some reason, the weapons in Breath of the Wild have been damaged to varying degrees, so you'll need to build them with leftovers to bring them back to life.
▲ Of course, transformation is not indiscriminate
The most surprising thing for me is the bow and arrow transformation, the once useless mound gum has become a hit, and the ice arrow rockets are all built by it; Bateye, which is almost only used to sell money, has also become a sought-after item, tracking arrows, guns, gunshots, and birds are no longer the exclusive skills of the game boss.
Kingdom Tears also seems to encourage more arrows, and I've barely had 100 spare arrows since the game's start, but Bateye is really not enough.
Oh yes, the bat-eye arrow can't track the balloon.
Although my game is less than 20 hours long, I can already feel the sincerity of the development team:
Hyrule Continent has been exploring for too long? The new work not only adds sky islands and underground mines, but also changes some of the landforms;
Tired of playing with weapon systems? Then use old weapons to glue everything in the world and make the battle more varied;
Just exploring is not enough? The planks and wheels are all given to you, and there is only one online battle platform away from Made in Zelda.
The birth of "Breath of the Wild" made players laugh that The Legend of Zelda does not need a 10 points to prove its worth, but the game media needs to prove its professionalism with 10 points. Now, Kingdom Tears goes a step further from the original and tells the world how to maintain or even surpass the excellent performance of a top game in the world.
Kingdom Tears is a gift from Nintendo to players and a treasure it gives to the game world.
From "Breath of the Wild", remembered touched
On the title page of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The Book of Masters are written three words: "Wake up...". This is where countless players' dreams begin.
Waking up in a strange world, a hundred years have passed, you who have lost your memory do not remember the world, and the world has forgotten you.
The best friends who fought side by side have grown old, and the only ones who remember you are the long-lived Zora and the isolated Krog. In this world, you are a hero, a descendant of a hero, a knight of the guards, a brave lord, but to most people, you are just a traveler.
While playing Breath of the Wild, it took me a long time to go to Kacalit Village, and it took me a long time to liberate the beast and go to the final battlefield. Forgotten my world, and I forgot.
But when I defeated Ganon and saved the world after a long battle, with the help of all the heroes, it seemed that something was different.
At the beginning of "Tears of the Kingdom", after returning to the Hailaru continent from Sky Island, I rushed to Kacalit Village as soon as possible, I wanted to know if the elderly Impa was safe, and then I went to Harnot Village, I was worried that something would happen to my fellow villagers.
I will read every news along the way, planning the next place to go - I am a brave man, even if I have lost all my strength, I am still a brave person who protects this world.
Of course, while I remember the world, the world responds to me. After returning to the Hailaru continent, every villager who met me would ask about my safety, and every friend who met me wanted to help me solve my problem.
▲ Recognize my villagers
When I went to the village of Litt and saw Teba's child Chuli, the little one recognized me at a glance. The child who longed for Link in "Breath of the Wild" became comrades who fought side by side in "Tears of the Kingdom", and we, as Link, witnessed the change of an era through two works.
▲ Image from: @NintendoofAmerica
Perhaps because of the precipitation of "Breath of the Wild", the plot of "Tears of the Kingdom" is fuller and more tense, not just Link alone, the whole world is moving, everyone is working together to deal with this disaster, and Link is just one of them.
I don't want to expand too much about the plot, everyone can get different touches in it, I only have one suggestion: try to talk to each NPC, you will find many Easter eggs of "Breath of the Wild".
The Legend of Zelda's masterpiece is every one
Nintendo has three major IPs.
Mario is a courtesan, it can create joy in different worlds, sideboard passing, 3D adventures, racing tennis.
Pokémon is an upstart, from the original generation to today's "Pokémon: Zhu / Zi", it has been around a game core to do increments, no matter how players and the media scold, it is still decades of tens of millions of sales.
Most games, like the Pokémon series, have a core gameplay, add some new elements, and enhance the graphics to be the sequel. But the "The Legend of Zelda" series is different, you can never guess what the next game will look like, and every time a new game is released, it will be widely recognized by the industry.
Open the well-known rating website Metacritic, you will find that in addition to the remake, every game in the "The Legend of Zelda" series has a high score of more than 90, and there are even monsters such as "Ocarina of Time" with 99 points, which have been at the top of the M station since 1998.
Take The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as an example, it is the first full score in the history of a series of game media such as Fami Pass, Gamespot, and IGN. It is generally considered to be the "best game of all time".
Its contribution to the entire gaming industry is also a milestone, and the perspective locking system provides the most reasonable solution to the perspective conversion problem that has plagued 3D games for many years, and it is still used today.
Although many domestic players know the "The Legend of Zelda" series because of the excellent quality of Switch out of the circle and "Breath of the Wild".
However, fresh game technologies and settings such as game save, non-linear game flow, target locking, dynamic weather, and parallel time and space were brought to the game field by the "The Legend of Zelda" series.
Each game can be called a masterpiece, "The Legend of Zelda", which not only touches players, but also leads the development of the game industry.
▲ P5 is also a very good game (loud)
New players don't have to worry too much, not playing "Breath of the Wild" will not affect the pit "Tears of the Kingdom" too much, the new work is also very intimate to add the character guide, various operations have a teaching temple, but after playing "Breath of the Wild" and then experiencing "Tears of the Kingdom" is naturally more immersive.
If you've already been moved by the world depicted in Breath of the Wild, there's nothing to say, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is your best game of the year.
At a press conference last week, Nintendo President Furukawa Shuntaro said that Nintendo has been actively promoting console development, but the annual plan for fiscal 2023~2024 does not include any new hardware or hardware upgrades. At the same time, Switch sales exceeded 150 million, becoming the third all-time sales after PS2 and NDS.
But I still have to say, old Ren, it's time to update the host. Some scenes are less than 20 frames, which is really sorry for the excellent gameplay of Kingdom Tears.
May the adventure never stop
To those of you who think you know the game well, I support you in reopening the game, experimenting a little more, and maybe discovering new surprises.
After the development of "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", series supervisor Hideki Fujibayashi said. It sounds a bit arrogant, but he's the overseer of Breath of the Wild, so there's nothing wrong with that.
At the end of 2020, some players found the Morse code for help in the soundtrack near the mythical beast of "Breath of the Wild". The signal of heroes calling for help has reverberated in the continent of Hailaru for a hundred years, and when players found out, it had been 3 years since the game was released.
After reading almost all the media, I thought I knew everything about the game (at least at the beginning), and I was still fascinated by the world when I opened Kingdom Tears for the first time, and I was amazed by the exquisite decryption ideas. Just in May 2023, Kingdom Tears has already booked a candidate for Game of the Year.
Based on the story of "Breath of the Wild", "Tears of the Kingdom" rewrites the laws of the entire Hailaru continent with innovative gameplay and a new story. Every place you once knew has a new look, and every reunion of the deceased can bring you a different touch.
▲ Me and my friends on the night of the game's release
Kingdom Tears is not a massive DLC for Breath of the Wild, but a brand new story under the same worldview.
Maybe 3 years later, you find Easter eggs similar to "Yingjie for help". I hope that then you will remember the words of Eiji Aonuma, producer of the "The Legend of Zelda" series:
Video games – not just the Legend of Zelda series – can go one step further, a big step!