Direct sequels are rare in the world of games. You always want the sequel to sell more copies than the original game, so limiting the audience to people who already played and beat the first forty hour game is an intuitively poor choice (having to watch a few two hour movies is generally less of an ask). I suppose when you sell thirty million copies the rules start to change a bit, and thus we get a direct sequel to 2017's Breath of the Wild with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The result is a bit mixed. Recycling the world allows them to do things like have a parallel sky world with aircraft and a seamless transition to the ground in a way that feels better with an old world than it would with a new world (skipping over everything in a new world would be weird). On the other hand, the familiar old world robs a great deal of the feeling of discovery/journey that was in the original- especially the towns, which are all carry-overs from the original albeit with some changes.
What fares the worst is actually the "story". Consider The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which was also built by recycling its prequel's assets. By using familiar faces but having them behave just differently enough, it created a subtle feeling of something being off in a way you could never do with a standalone game. In Tears of the Kingdom some time has passed, people and places have changed a little, youngsters are peacefully ascending into power over their elders, but ultimately no characters or places have transformed in a shocking way that you aren't just going to revert at the end of their quest. Breath of the Wild didn't necessarily have too many interesting characters so much as it had interesting cultures to learn about, so without any changes to the status quo you're pretty much left with nothing. Having seen games like Dragon Quest VII do so much narrative with how places can change within the same game, it's really a shame to see them do so little with it here given the rare opportunity of a direct sequel.
The main plot is a little more interesting in some ways, particularly the way it weaves with the present day in ways that can change your perception of things depending on what order you find things, but doesn't really commit to its big moment so even that feels pretty shallow. This also feels like the least interesting interpretation of Ganondorf as a character, having neither the justification of Ocarina of Time nor the weary old man of The Wind Waker. I suppose the take is just him being in his "prime" and most machiavellian but... eh. It makes me wonder why they even brought him back instead of giving us someone new (wait he was in Twilight Princess too huh? Pretty boring there as well I suppose. Honestly I don't know why I even went down this Ganondorf hole because it's kind of just Wind Waker where he's actually interesting now that I think about it so I probably shouldn't even hold it against this game. Boy Wind Waker sure was a good game. Yes, even the treasure hunting segments. Especially the treasure hunting segments, that's just more reason to go sailing. What were we talking about again?)
As a game, though, it does manage to make the most of the recycling. By being able to focus almost entirely on content, they basically created three distinct open worlds instead of just one (almost like they had a bunch of prototypes already and just threw them in a pot together). This is basically its secret sauce in staying entertaining throughout: when you're not feeling like doing one type of open world, you can jump over to a different one that you're in the mood for. The rewards and types of activities in each become clear enough that you can easily chart a path to your preferences- often getting distracted on the way there just like the original. The rewards themselves are also handled a bit better than the original game- even if you find armor with duplicate functionality, having a distinct look feels like something even if the level of fan service is a bit much. I hit 100hrs in Breath of the Wild before getting exhausted enough to beat it, while Tears of the Kingdom took me 160hrs to reach that exhaustion. Even at the end I wasn't even disgusted at the thought of playing more so much as I simply wanted to do something else after months of playing the same game (there's a distinction that I may be failing to communicate here).
This strength of choose your own variety is also a bit of a weakness.
The heavily expanded world size, despite including a lot of things from
the first game, also feels far more stretched for visual variety than
the original game. The sky world pretty much only has one visual look to
it, and other new areas are only a little bit better (to be fair:
despite only having a few looks, caves have a staggering amount of
geometry variety compared to similar open world games- they absolutely
made the right choice in focus here). Worse, knowing what each place
generally contains dampens the sense of discovery a little bit compared
to how you could stumble into entirely unique one-off game rules in Breath of the Wild.
The shrines have less variety (because certain types ended up elsewhere
in the world this time) so you have a decent idea of what you're
getting into with each one. The simplest way to describe it is just that Breath of the Wild has higher highs, but Tears of the Kingdom has a much more consistently high level of enjoyment- which of those is actually better will depend on you as a person.
That pretty well sums it up, but there's a whole lot of smaller points to talk about as well:
- They try to force more player creativity in combat by introducing common enemies with enormous amounts of HP after so many hours, but I don't feel like it completely works. Yes, I figured out a lot of new ways to kill things quicker, but they all took resources so my brain was often still stingy with it. Punishing players by making things take longer just doesn't feel great compared to having actual danger. Combat is absolutely the thing I got sick of fastest.
- As cool as the weapon fusion system sounds on paper, by the end it mostly ends up as a pretty boring weapon crafting system. I actually think I prefer Breath of the Wild's system better for forcing more variety on me and less menu busywork (was also more satisfying to mark good weapons on the map and retrieve them when needed), but I have heard haters of that system actually prefer this one?
- It's a good thing they waited until right before release to show that building stuff was the main feature of the game, 'cause my Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts addled brain would have been royally disappointed by how much simpler vehicles are here. I didn't have time to build expectations so in the end I accept that building stuff is mostly just a cool little physics puzzle thing with some combat options on the side. It's neat, but I never actually built any crazy combat mechs like I expected to- building limitations and the resource costs triggered the never-use-an-elixir part of my brain, though I was at least willing to use some convenience stuff.
- Unlocking Zonai parts was really cool and basically makes the Breath of the Wild formula feel more like a traditional Zelda (really it kind of feels like "oops all items"), in combination with the main quest and dungeons continuing to be pretty on point.
- I sometimes feel like some of these complaints might not be the game's
fault so much as a failure of my own creativity to do something cooler
with the systems in place. Not really sure since I refused to watch any videos of people doing cool stuff, as I consider knowledge itself to be power and thus a spoiler in these two games.
- Even though one of my only complaints with Breath of the Wild was that there weren't any caves, now that they literally added caves to that world I'm not sure it actually satisfied me. It's probably due to being the same world, but Elden Ring has much more satisfying caves to spot with your vision- Tears relies a little too heavily on hint mechanics to get to them (likely the downside of reusing the same world). I was also hoping for the caves to be more like having multiple Hyrule Castles from the original, but they're generally closer to the micro-dungeon shrines of that game.
- Horses are even more pointless than before. What a remarkable vestigial element.
- The final battle is still comically easy if you've prepared, though elements of it are a bit better than the original game. I get why they do it, but I sure wish they'd add some obscure true super final boss or something at least to give more reasons to power up harder.
- I am haunted by how much of the game is still left and whether any of those things are really cool stuff. Did I miss a new Eventide Isle? Probably not, yet still my mind churns at the possibility. Beating the game has only given me a shred of peace.
So should you play Tears of the Kingdom? If you liked Breath of the Wild, then absolutely- there still aren't that many games in the "open world you explore with your eyes instead of minimap icons" genre so really what else are you going to play if you want more? If you didn't like it, maybe try it, but I wouldn't expect much to have changed for you.
