#zleda

UPHEAVING THE FAMILIAR

One of the biggest obstacles Nintendo likely faced in development was finding a way to make the world of Hyrule fresh again, despite largely using the same map from BOTW. Their answer is The Upheaval. TOTK opens with Link and Zelda investigating the source of a strange, toxic substance seeping out from deep below Hyrule Castle. The Gloom sickens and weakens anyone that touches it, and eventually they see the source is a decayed, withered body held in place by a strange, glowing arm. Soon enough the body stirs and a torrent of Gloom is unleashed on Hyrule. The Master Sword (and most of Link’s right arm) is destroyed, Hyrule Castle is suspended high in the air and Zelda vanishes after being engulfed by a strange light. In the aftermath Link finds himself on a floating island, one of many now dotting Hyrule’s skies, with the mysterious arm having replaced his corrupted one, and with it he has two goals: stopping the strange figure and finding Zelda.

The structure of TOTK is largely the same as the predecessor, being almost completely open after players complete a lengthy tutorial. For what it’s worth, I find this game’s story a bit more interesting than BOTW, but TOTK still inherits some of that game’s issues when it comes to narrative. When you have a game where 90% of the plot is both optional and can be done in any order, it can be difficult to make things impactful and coherent. As a result, the Zelda team arrived at a solution that is understandable, but a bit grating after a point. Most main missions are largely written as if they could be the player’s FIRST main mission after the tutorial, and the end result is a lot of repetition as the same exposition dump is given to players multiple times over the entire playthrough.

Similar to BOTW, the juiciest bits of this game’s narrative are found in the past. Link can find memories hidden away all over Hyrule, which largely explains the bulk of the game’s backstory concerning the ancient Zonai, a race of beings that were there at Hyrule’s founding but are strangely absent in the present day. This is also how we primarily get the main villain, this game’s incarnation of Ganondorf, fleshed out. As a result of the game’s commitment to nonlinearity it’s possible to skip all of the set up and arrive at the conclusion without any of the build-up, which happened to me. Suddenly I know of the game’s biggest twist and the answer to the game’s main driving question, which made any subsequent plot moment lose a lot of impact. While the game is often very good at acknowledging sequence breaks with certain quests, it was a bit annoying that the game continued to play coy despite having laid out the main answer to me so early on. Admittedly, that won’t be everyone’s experience, but that was a big issue for me that held the narrative back a bit. Well that and some bad audio mixing. It would have been nice to actually hear the sparsely used voice acting over the often booming music!

I do appreciate that this game’s overall tone is a lot more optimistic and focused on unity compared to BOTW’s almost crushing loneliness, serving to give TOTK its own identity. Link has plenty of allies right from the get-go this time around, with a base of operations near Hyrule Castle that slowly expands as the game goes on. It’s pretty rewarding to see the races of Hyrule join together, at least after you help them with their own issues Ganondorf’s revival has caused. As with the previous game, the overall art direction is also fantastic, making for some breathtaking vistas at times. As much as the Switch is really showing its age, the technical aspects of this game are proof that specs aren’t everything. Being able to load up this massive world with almost seamless navigation and juggling of physics objects is nothing short of astounding considering the Switch is little more than an outdated tablet at this point, and it manages to be at a mostly stable 30 FPS, making a marked improvement from BOTW. While I have my misgivings with some of the narrative structure, I was immediately pulled in and think the game has a great start, but there’s plenty to sink your teeth into, as I’ll demonstrate.

TIERS OF THE KINGDOM

BOTW was already a gigantic game, but TOTK pushes to somehow stuff in even more. Broadly speaking, we can look at three different tiers of the kingdom (heh), each with their own distinct feel and gameplay loop. Starting with the sky, there’s this calm, almost ethereal feeling to most of the sky islands found in this game. The Great Sky Island that players start out on definitely paints a good picture of what to expect as they continue exploring…however I found that the sky was far and away the most lacking part of the game’s world.

The Sky Islands are both lacking in size and frequency, a criticism that also plagued Skyward Sword from back in the Wii era. The Great Sky Island really set me up for disappointment, when most other sky structures are barely a fraction of its size and start to feel same-y after a point. You pop up into the sky, find a shrine, maybe a treasure chest…and then you’re done. Only rarely can you find somewhat larger, more interesting structures, but they’re surrounded by a TON of empty space. To a degree this is probably intentional. If the entire skyline was filled with floating islands it wouldn’t look very good from the surface, so having some room to breathe makes sense aesthetically. There’s also the fact that making sure the islands are more spaced out naturally makes it harder to get to them. You end the tutorial without your paraglider, and early in the game your stamina won’t hold out long enough to sail through the massive gaps in the sky to reach another island. That way, there’s this sense of mystery and anticipation when finding the next destination in the sky. I would look up at massive sky labyrinths or floating spheres and wonder both what was in there…but also how I’d even get up there. Even so, the fact that some sky islands are so small you can’t even really spot them on a zoomed-out map is a step too far. I’m shocked at how much they were played up in marketing when they barely factored into my total playtime.

Thankfully, there’s a lot more to this game. The surface is where the bulk of the game’s focus on community really comes into play. You have all the different villages and regions to explore, and it’s where the bulk of vendors and quests will be. Without Guardians roaming around, you notice a LOT more NPCs just out and about in Hyrule, and it was a welcome contrast to the other tiers and their relative isolation. Be it checking in on the latest gossip at stables, or getting my fashion on at Hateno Village, there was always something to do. The bulk of the game’s Shrines of Light are also found here, giving players quick, isolated puzzles that slowly drip feed health and stamina upgrades. Even if you want to go visit the sky, you’re basically required to return to the surface in search of new ways to get up high, such as the Skyview Towers invented by Purah and Robbie. These not only fill in your Purah Pad’s map, but also catapult you high into the air, giving you the chance to reach certain sky islands, or get a different perspective as you plot where to go next. But sometimes you might notice some strange areas on the surface that require…deeper examination.

All over Hyrule players can find massive chasms that are surrounded by Gloom, but if you’re brave enough to head down one you’ll find one of the game’s biggest secrets…the Depths. A gargantuan subterranean region, I found the Depths to be a very interesting inversion of the game’s normal environments in more ways than one. For starters, compared to the boundless freedom found in the surface and the sky, you have to take it slow and steady underground. Most of the Depths are pitch black, and you never know what is lurking just beyond the shadows. Link will either have to use special seeds to create temporary light, or seek out Lightroots that can illuminate larger chunks of the map permanently. Unlike when you use the Skyview Towers to map out the sky and surface, Lightroots only illuminate a small radius around them, causing me to slowly work from root to root, occasionally being sidetracked by various treasures and structures to explore. Eventually, I noticed that Lightroots connect to the Shrines of Light found on the surface and suddenly it all came together: the Depths are just an inverted surface. Every mountain becomes a massive, deep valley. Every body of water turns into an impenetrable wall. Similar to the sky, players will have to leave the depths and find another way back down in order to get to certain areas, but even more than that…being in the Depths for so long can be fatal. Gloom is much more concentrated down in the Depths, and enemies are also infected with it. Taking damage from Gloom goes a step further and effectively “breaks” your heart gauge, requiring special meals made from Sundelion flowers found mostly on the sky in order to heal, that or natural light from the surface or Lightroots. As dangerous as the depths are though, they’re the main source of Zonaite, a special ore that will be incredibly handy when using the wide range of Zonai technology found throughout the game.

THE FUN OF CHEATING

The Skeikiah Slate from BOTW is no more, but Link has arguably better powers to work with this time around with the help of his nifty new arm. During the tutorial, players gain four main powers from the Zonai to help on his adventure and it doesn’t take long to realize that Link is so powerful now that you’re basically playing with cheat codes.

The first and likely most important power is Ultrahand. At first glance it seems like a reskin of Magnesis, letting you pick up and move objects, though this time you aren’t limited to metal. But the real kicker here is the ability to combine objects together with…basically magical glue. Take some wooden boards and glue them together, attach some wheels and BAM…you have a makeshift cart. Or you can use one of the many different ancient Zonai devices by attaching them to a wide variety of things for almost limitless possibilities. Zonai devices often look like modern-day technology, even running off of a battery of sorts that Link can upgrade as he goes through the game. Fans, flamethrowers, steering wheels…the list goes on. Some devices are just strewn about all over the game, but in the sky specifically you can find…basically gatcha machines that dispense TONS of devices in capsule form that you can store and use later on when you need them. What’s more, later in the game you can find the Autobuild power that allows you to save “recipes” of various constructions, and then assemble them quickly, being able to use zonaite if you’re short some parts. What I like about this power is that you can be as simple or as complicated as you want. You COULD just glue some logs together as a makeshift raft…or you could go out of your way to make something far more intricate. For players that’d rather not mess with the ability entirely…while the game is built with it in mind, you can still get by for most of the game without worrying about it as much. Autobuild especially helps cut down on the time spent building things as a really great upgrade too. The entire game could have easily been built around this concept alone, but we still have other powers to cover.

Fuse is effectively a combat-centric take on Ultrahand. Using Fuse, Link can take almost any object and glue it to his weapons. I can put a Zonai spring on a shield, or glue a sword to my sword. I can even put a chunk of meat on my arrowhead if I’m so inclined. Nearly every object or material in the game can be fused to your arsenal, with a variety of great effects that can make weapons stronger, more durable, or given extra attributes. As an early example, I fused a mine cart to my shield, turning my shield into a skateboard that let me grind on rails like I’m in some Sonic game. Getting elemental weapons is as easy as attaching a special fruit or ore to my weapon, and those are way easier to find than elemental weapons ever were in BOTW. Your arrows are also much more versatile now; attach an enemy’s eyeball to an arrow to make it home in on targets, or a bright bloom seed to light up the Depths from afar. Fuse allows even the weakest of weapons to be useful, which is something that just wasn’t possible in BOTW. I can take a stick and fuse a rock to it to make a makeshift hammer that’s great for breaking open ore deposits or brittle walls, so no more stockpiling rare hammer weapons or waiting on my bomb runes to recharge. It also goes a long way towards making battles more worthwhile to even do, as enemies drop horns and claws that can grant HUGE strength increases to weapons. Before, in BOTW I would eventually avoid fighting late-game enemies because they were too beefy to deal with, as you’d lose multiple weapons in the process and any weapons they dropped weren’t as good. It was a net loss. But now even fighting silver enemies isn’t that bad, since that means I can put that silver moblin horn on some middling spear I found and suddenly that is among my strongest weapons. I have my own qualms about combat in general in this game, but Fuse goes a long way towards making it more fun to experiment and stick with than ever before.

Ascend admittedly is a step down in application, but is still quite good. The fact that it was initially a dev tool should be telling enough. With Ascend, Link can jump up through any ceiling and pop out on top of the structure. Sometimes this is just as simple as going up a floor in a house, or being able to explore a deep, expansive cave and then use Ascend to leave, popping out at the very top of the mountain you found the cave in. In the depths there are even some rare structures that lead all the way back up to the surface that Link can use Ascend on. It honestly breaks traditional level design and so the game had to do a lot of careful restructuring to manage but even then with some application of your other powers, it can be pretty easy to Ascend past areas you’re meant to go through normally. But nothing compares to the power of Recall.

Initially, I thought Recall was a very situational puzzle solver. You aim at an object and can rewind it back roughly 30 seconds or so, but further applications showed that it might be the most broken of the lot. Recall has much more range than any other power, and can affect virtually anything you could also use Ultrahand or Fuse on. I’ve had instances where I’ve built a glider, only to go off course or miss my mark, and I would use Recall as basically a reset button to bring it back to a better position. Enemies dying and leaving their valuable collectibles falling off a cliff can be saved with a button press. What’s more, any movement you did with Ultrahand will be replicated with Recall, so I’ve done that to get vehicles aligned or to rise up platforms I would then Ascend onto to get up high. I’ve even completely broken shrine puzzles with Recall, nullifying any challenge they might have otherwise posed. Some might get a kick out of it, but I felt I kind of optimized the fun out of puzzles to a degree. Regardless, these powers are a lot of fun to mess with and even more versatile than BOTW’s power set was. But while we’re kind of bringing up a negative…I may as well get a bit more critical.

TEARS OF THE FANBOY

I want to stress that, despite my complaints here or there, I adored this game and just DEVOURED it over the last month or so. I put over 245 hours into it, doing almost everything of value. Playing the game for long stretches and having it basically absorb an entire month of my life…I’ll be the first to admit my own experiences and annoyances won’t be shared by many, and for normal people that just play in smaller bursts and don’t care about full completion, they likely won’t have nearly as many issues as I did. But…spending that much time with any one game is going to reveal some of the cracks in it, and those did chip away at my enjoyment a bit.

TOTK is a complex game, with a ton of things the player can do at any given moment, but I do think that Nintendo went a bit too hard on filling this game up with actions you can perform, and then realized they ran out of buttons on the controller along the way. Simply put, some actions are far more cumbersome than they should be. Selecting materials to use, either to throw or attach to arrows is tedious. You hold Up on the D-Pad, then use the right stick to find the item you want, but seeing as there are dozens upon dozens of materials you can use throughout the game, eventually that list becomes harder and harder to parse, leading to a lot of wasted time scrolling to find the exact item you need. You can hit Y to sort by different parameters, but if want you want isn’t near the front, then prepare to spend several seconds scrolling down to find it. A “favorites” option would have been a godsend here; just let me label a handful of items for quick reference. Throwing materials is also awkward, having to first throw your weapon, but then selecting an item with Up on the D-Pad as well. While I appreciate having more options for arrows and the like, the elegance of quickly swapping between arrow types in BOTW is missed here.

Speaking of direct comparisons between these two games…let’s talk Sage Powers. Compared to the Champion Powers from BOTW, these are a massive downgrade in both strength and usability. In TOTK if I want to use a Sage’s ability I have to manually walk over to them and ready them with the A button, then usually hit A again to actually use it. In the heat of the moment having to chase down my AI companions gets old fast, and then aside from that there’s the fact that the A button is already pretty multi-contextual as it is. I’ve had tons of experiences mashing A to grab items on the ground, only for Tulin or Yunobo to walk in front of me and have me accidentally activate their power and blow items away. Looking at the four powers in depth, while they have their uses they’re rarely worth the hassle of using them. Sidon’s water shield and attack is very niche, as ice attacks can do the same things as water, with the added benefit of freezing targets. Riju’s lightning arrows take forever to set up, and aiming Yunobo’s fire spin can be tedious. Tulin is about the only Sage that feels well designed, as more often than not I will always have him around to give me a boost of horizontal movement while gliding. I don’t have to worry about tracking him down, or the A button doing something else most of the time. On the ground though, he has the same issues. I enjoy having the Sages around as AI partners to take some of the heat off of fights, but compared to how simple and effective the Champion Powers were in BOTW, all mapped to different buttons and being next to impossible to accidentally do…it’s pretty disappointing.

There are other things to go over too, some of which already existed as problems in BOTW. Just as in the previous game, climbing wet surfaces is torture. TOTK introduces some solutions but they feel poorly implemented. Players can now make tonics that grant “slip resistance” to climb up wet surfaces more easily…but in practice you’ll barely notice the effects. There’s also an armor set that is said to make you immune to slipping entirely, but that is locked behind a quest chain that can take a while to complete…and then once you get the full set you realize that you need to upgrade all three pieces two times to actually unlock the hidden set bonus to make you completely slip immune. On that same note…upgrading armor is still incredibly tedious, especially when it comes to dealing with any pieces you need from dragons. Horses are also still pretty pointless to use after a point. Without even getting into the fact that they can’t be used in huge chunks of the map, like sandy deserts or rocky mountains, not to mention the sky islands or Depths…being able to build vehicles with Ultrahand basically replaces their only real function as transportation. And yet for whatever reason, whistling for your horse is still mapped onto the D-pad. In a game where they’re clearly hurting for more buttons having one relegated to something I barely even considered using is pretty bad.

I have plenty of issues with combat in the game as well. I know Zelda isn’t a series where action is the main event, but even so the action is typically satisfying in its own way. I’d best describe it as tedious here; enemies are damage sponges, your own attacks send them far away and force you to track them down, and after a certain point the difficulty curve falls apart. I know difficulty is subjective, but both BOTW and TOTK are very strange about balance. The beginning of the game is the hardest, as you have almost nothing. But once you stockpile some meals to heal, armor to up your defense, and materials for fusion the game can’t really do anything to you. I once thought Gleeoks or Lynels were to be avoided, but getting my hands on enough Keese eyeballs to make homing arrows means I can stun them easily and melt through their health as they lay down defenseless. Mastering the parry and perfect dodge also eliminates most options enemies can even do to you. But admittedly, not everyone IS always going to be perfectly prepared for any given fight, or know that certain abilities can just render some enemies a joke. I can tell that balancing a game that is so nonlinear and open-ended is no easy task, but I do think they made players a BIT too strong at points and hope later games can find a better balance. But overall, that’ll mostly do it on the nitpicks.

CONCLUSION

When I beat BOTW, I had wished I could play it through again with my memories wiped, just so I could experience it all again for the first time. Tears of the Kingdom is arguably the next best thing. A twist on something familiar, with some curveballs thrown in for good measure. Link’s new abilities do a lot to spice up how you interact with the world, and there have been some noticeable improvements to the original’s issues, even if some still remain. With this likely being the future of the franchise, at least for now, I’m interested in seeing what lessons Nintendo can take from these two entries. For my money, Nintendo has managed to iterate on one of my favorite games out there and have made it hard to go back. I’m hard pressed to think of too many things BOTW did better, outside of the novelty of being the first game in this new style. I liken BOTW’s strength to being the joy of discovery, the appeal of exploring the unknown. While there are elements of that in TOTK, this time around the focus is on experimentation. Like the joys of playing with a tub of random Lego pieces, being able to adapt to any solution with whatever you have around, bending and breaking the rules of the game world, the end result is unrivaled freedom and depth that will keep people busy well until the next main Zelda.

Until next time,