The continent of Hylaru shaped by "The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild" has been praised as "Heaven" by countless players. And Nintendo's developers spent a full 6 years breaking the barrier of the once sky and bringing us to a higher sky.
This review is based on 60 hours of gameplay experience, because the amount of content in this game is too terrifying, it does not represent the whole game.
Whimsical degrees of freedom
In the previous game, Breath of the Wild, there were many limitations to the 4 abilities offered by the game, but even so, players still played flowers.
With Kingdom Tears, the abilities in the game become more imaginative, and even cooperate with each other to make the flow experience of the game very different.
As stated in the official developer interview, this is an official "cheating encouragement" game. From strategy routes to puzzle solving to boss play, although there is an "official recommended gameplay", for players who want to have more fun, the original design of this game is to "try different solutions".
The collision between arm abilities, objects, and the environment makes the game's degree of freedom more than just "doubled" compared to Breath of the Wild.
For players who have played the previous game, when they first started this game, they may still be playing "Breath of the Wild 2", and their thinking has not changed. But as you become familiar with the abilities in this game, it will slowly change from "Breath of the Wild 2" to "Tears of the Kingdom", and the door to a new world will open for you.
It is entirely conceivable that as more players get the game and more gameplay is developed, there are still endless possibilities for this game.
Outrageously large map area
Before the official release of "Tears of the Kingdom", in fact, the official never explicitly said that there was an "underground world", and it was not until a weekend after the release that the official listed it as "promoteable" content.
If Breath of the Wild's map is a bumpy cookie, Kingdom's Tears map is like a mille-feuille — it's not only multi-layered, but each layer is extremely three-dimensional.
The game contains three layers of maps, namely sky, ground and underground.
Among them, the sky part has to limit the number of empty islands because it is necessary to maintain a clear and bright appearance, which is not large in terms of area alone. However, in several large air areas, there are several layers of empty islands stacked, and the "initial empty island" at the beginning of the game is a clear example.
The underground world is an area that completely corresponds to the entire Hyruleu ground, which is very large, and the map has a large height difference, and it also has a large exploration area in the vertical direction.
In addition to the new two layers of maps, the continent of Hylaru has also undergone earth-shaking changes compared to "Breath of the Wild". There are also a large number of caves in the mountain body in the ground map section, which gives the ground more space to explore.
The amount of content is overwhelming
From the perspective of the map alone, the area of this game has reached 3 times the size of "Breath of the Wild". But if the area is just large without proper interactive content filling, it becomes empty and uninteresting.
The solution this time is not much different from "Breath of the Wild", which still uses temples and towers as the main attraction anchors, and uses glowing tree roots underground because of the dark environment. This also makes many players feel that when they first see it, they will no longer have the shock of "Breath of the Wild".
However, as you play deeper, you will find that the interactive points such as monsters, NPCs, ahahah, and treasure chests on the map of this game are denser than in the previous game.
Thanks to the addition of the two functions of "Leftover Construction" and "Ultimate Hand", this game has also become more interesting in the rush part.
Many times in "Breath of the Wild" the focus of climbing is "physical management". But the climbing of this work... No, there are a lot of paths in this game that don't need to be climbed at all. Players can use roadside materials to craft vehicles to get to the top, or find caves or depressions on the mountain, and use the Tongtian Technique to reach the top.
This also makes the game spend a lot of time "running the map" link, which really becomes a gameplay that requires observation, exploration, and brains, making every minute of the game full of fun.
A continuation of human details
The humanistic part of Breath of the Wild is regarded as the pinnacle by many players and practitioners.
Not only are the key characters of the main story such as Zelda, Siyingjie, Pureya, and Impa successfully created, but even many NPC characters such as Mitsuba and Songda are equally impressive.
As a direct sequel to the timeline, "Tears of the Kingdom" takes place several years after "Breath of the Wild", and the NPCs in the game also have their own growth and life changes.
Because of this, players who have played "Breath of the Wild" in depth, especially those who carefully read the dialogue of each NPC, will definitely be shocked by the details of this game again!
No longer lonely Link
The theme of this game is just like Link's name, connecting the sky and the earth, connecting the ancient and the modern, and connecting everyone on the continent of Hyrule.
The feeling of "the whole world has fallen, only Link is fighting" in the previous game is gone, replaced by "the whole world is working together, everyone is fighting alongside Link".
From the key characters of the story to ordinary NPCs, there are a lot of cooperative battles with others. Although sometimes AI will suddenly go offline with IQ, bringing a "you don't affect me, I'm easier alone" experience, but overall, this design of this game is very successful.
But it's not for everyone
Just as many players were dissuaded by the loneliness of Breath of the Wild, Kingdom Tears, while more fun than its predecessor, must also have players who don't like it.
Here are just a few designs that may lead to dissuasion (but not that such designs are bad, but that some people will not like them).
Underworld
Although the underground world has a very large explorable area, the design of the terrain is extremely high-quality, and the gameplay of slowly opening up with bright light flowers is fun, the dark environment can be uncomfortable for some players, especially those with claustrophobia.
In addition, the underworld's resource budget is uneven. Exploring a lap can cost you hundreds of wooden arrows and shiny flowers, but you'll get very few rewards, such as ore, costumes and blueprints. In the event of a mismatch between risk and reward, this map may cause many players to lose motivation to explore.
Combat is encouraged more
I believe that many friends who have started the game have felt that this work is obviously much more difficult than "Breath of the Wild" in the combat part. Walking on the road, I was salivated by a lizard warrior who didn't know where it came from, and it was over...
This is mainly because the addition of the "Leftover Build" ability has increased the output limit of weapons in the game a lot. With this feature, you can get 70 or 80 attack weapons in the middle of the game, and use the material of powerful monsters such as centaurs to increase the attack to more than 200, which was unimaginable in the previous game.
Because of this, the game encourages players to fight more from the beginning. The more you fight, the better you can get equipment resources. Once you've acquired powerful equipment, it's easier to challenge strong enemies. And the material of strong enemies can further improve the equipment... This is a virtuous cycle that officials want players to enter.
But for many players who don't like to fight and can hide and hide, this design that encourages combat also brings more fatigue. If you often dodge combat from the start, you risk falling into a vicious cycle that makes the game's combat experience progressively worse.
The difficulty of solving puzzles has decreased
There are a lot of temples in this work, and the design of the temple is also very grand, and it incorporates a lot of the flavor of the old "Zelda", which can make many old players shine.
But perhaps because the battles became harder and the map area was larger and more complex, the development team reduced the difficulty in solving temples and temples.
In terms of design alone, this makes sense. It's also hard and hard, and it will bring a lot of frustration to players, this is "The Legend of Zelda" not "Black Souls".
Especially the temple is still an important means to improve HP, the battle can not fight more temples to improve HP, if the temple is also difficult, it is really the feeling that you can't play around hitting the wall.
This design that upsets the balance of the scales will also disappoint players who hate combat and love puzzle solving.
Again, these are not the "shortcomings" of the game, but part of the design. Just like "Arsenic of Ru, Honey of the Other", some players will love this game more because of these designs, but some players will prefer the previous game.
I also want to play for another 1000 hours
In this review, we will not take "summary" as the last part of this article.
Because in just 4 days and 60 hours of gameplay, I really don't qualify to "summarize" such a masterpiece that has created a pinnacle.
The experience brought by "Kingdom Tears" may not be as shocking as "Breath of the Wild" back then, or it may not be liked by some players because of the design trade-offs. But the great improvement in the overall quality of this work is also undoubted.
If you like Breath of the Wild, then Kingdom Tears is a must, it's an even more memorable adventure.
If you don't like Breath of the Wild, try Tears of the Kingdom, because the only flaw in the previous game is also not present in this game!