It’s the sequel to the GOTY winner in 2017 the claimed Breath of the Wild. This project was planned as a downloadable content but as long as the ideas were coming, the difficulty to make it work increased too.
Resulted to be a larger project than the initial idea, then they modified the project to a second game instead of a single DLC. The changes implemented in the open world of Hyrule included exploration vertical-horizontal.
Aonuma confirmed that the idea to explore the sky was there since the Skyward Sword development, but the current technology was not able to handle it, but the Nintendo switch had enough potency to make it possible.
Tears of the Kingdom brought the old key points that made the Legend of Zelda one of the iconic sagas in the industry, including more puzzles, the classic temples and large dungeons.
Developed by the same team ENPD and going gold in the due time. Nintendo decided to take a whole world to polish and optimize the program. With all that said it looks very familiar on the graphics side, well they use the same graphics engine.
This title takes the same world, characters, protagonists, visuals; anyone could say there is no need for another game but its easy to tell the difference once you play for a few minutes.
Highlights for Tears of the Kingdom
Story
After the Breath of the Wild conclusion, there a few questions without answer that Zelda wanted to investigate, guarded by his loyal knight they went to the cavern beneath the castle to find an untouched wall that describes the past about the imprisoning war, the sages and the first king of Hyrule against the Demon King.
They continue venturing into the cavern infested with gloom to find a mummy that reacts to the master sword power severely hurting Link´s arm and tearing to pieces the sword.
As soon as the mummy awakens its power lift the castle unleashing a catastrophe throughout the kingdom and surrounding areas. At the same time the princess falls of a cliff disappearing in a mysterious light.
Link woke up with a replaced arm in an isle in the sky, hearing a strange voice of a spirit called Rauru. It explains that he healed and replaced his damaged arm and tells him about his new powers. After some puzzles and exploring the isle, Link comes back to Hyrule.
Gameplay
The gameplay is familiar to the first entry, but with new powers to solve puzzles, making a good use of every weapon you find in the way in the epic adventure to save the kingdom again.
There is a new tablet to use but isn’t the Sheika one, this new device is focused in data and images collecting. The new powers coming from his arm are the very first big difference from the first journey in this land.
The new abilities are 5 in total and everyone has a different use:
- Ultrahand: move and combine devices with other materials.
- Fuse: add inanimate objects to certain weapons and shields to make them sturdy and gain a different use.
- Ascend: Allows the body to move trough walls vertically as long as it’s in range.
- Recall: Stops and backtracks time to certain objects in the world.
- Autobuild: Builds instantly and automatically the objects created previously by ultrahand using nearby pieces.
Using the same weapons design and a vast way to combine them with zonai devices or solid rocks to increase their damage output we well enjoy suppressing the kogoblins and new enemies coming from the gloom.
There is a good amount of freedom to create anything that comes to mind, the NEPD had to be careful about the power of the crafted objects to not break the game difficulty.
Open world horizontal-vertical
The freedom seen in the first part has been surpassed adding multiple layouts to the explorable world, in other words, the sky, the depths and the surface are the new terrain to move on.
The sky isles, the original habitat of certain tribe and origin of an ancient technology. The harder terrain to explore is the depths, it lacks a light source, vastly fungi infested area plagued with gloom and strange creatures.
A hostile place filled with kogoblins and other characteristics that makes it really hard to tackle in. For example, you will need a good number of light seeds and arrows to illuminate all the way.
The damage suffered isn’t healable until you reach a root that illuminates a little area and saves your progress as any map tower. The number of hearts is decreasing as long as Link is damaged by the dwellers or the gloom substance.
Graphics
It’s one of the games with better visuals in the whole catalogue of Switch, this could the better one if only I could check the all of them. Despite using the same engine as its predecessor, the detailed landscapes and world as a whole taking in count the sky, the depths and the surface without loading screens it’s a wonderful masterpiece.
The NEPD took a whole year to polish and optimize the program after finishing its development. A good idea to keep the high quality showed in the prequel, personally talking I can’t expect a sequel under the bar settled for the Breath of the Wild.
The new powers such as Recall and Ascension may be a little tricky for the graphics by their own nature, but still after 40 hours playing didn’t get any glitch or issue at all.
Sound
Tears of the kingdom has a memorable original soundtrack, brought to a reality by Manaka Kataoka, Maasa Miyoshi, Masato Ohashi and Tsukasa Usui.
As expected with the series the music its captivating and catch you in that atmosphere wanted to create for the players. The sound effects are very easy to follow and imagine for every little detail, for example, the Recall ability backtracking the objects movement is a classic clock sound impossible to mistake.
Despite the medieval environment its music keeps getting better and better as unpredictable.
Performance
Tested on Nintendo Switch Lite, with an outstanding performance and non-existent errors, glitches or bugs at all. It’s easy to tell the high dedication put on the optimization on the program.
Bringing a whole open world “vertical and horizontal” it’s hard to believe the clean and smooth how it runs in any sense.
The long loading screens for respawn and teleport are there as before, but it doesn’t overheat the system even after long gaming sessions.
Conclusions
- The new powers make the game feel like a total new experience despite the familiar faces and landscapes.
- The game is bigger and more ambitious than the prequel, offering a horizontal and vertical odyssey through the sky, surface and depths.
- The known formula is back, a story, temples, puzzles and big dungeons focused adventure.
- A total masterpiece, must play for every person who enjoys gaming. A flawless work at every front.