The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (May 12, 2023)

Gizmo_Duck

Gizmo_Duck

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The bottom line: After an hour with a game that will last far longer, Tears of the Kingdom appears to exemplify the inevitable Zelda franchise ebb to more complex experiences.

  • 1998's streamlined classic The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time led to 2000's time-looping head-spinner Majora's Mask. The elegant 2002 Wind Waker eventually led to 2011's creative but cumbersome Skyward Sword.
  • With Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda is getting complicated again.
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Axios

It's difficult to gauge a game as sprawling as Tears of the Kingdom after playing for only an hour, but the potential combination of Breath of the Wild's wonder with Minecraft's creativity makes this seem like another potentially big winner for Nintendo.
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Bloomberg

Leaving my hands-on demo, I'm equal parts excited and intimidated by what The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom brings to the table. On one hand, I cannot wait to see just how clever and nearly game-breaking we can get using these various mechanics; it's truly amazing to see Nintendo react to the community's creativity in Breath of the Wild with a sequel that leans into how players used the mechanics in ways they probably never thought of. In giving players even more tools (and just as many new problems to solve), Nintendo is showing it's not afraid of letting players loose in a massive open world with perhaps the most open-ended mechanics it has ever implemented.
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Game Informer

All in all, from Ultrahand to Fuse and dozens of sky islands, these are just some of the things that make this game - the rare direct sequel to a previous Zelda game - feel the most fresh so far. That's because lots of animations, objects, outfits, sounds, and more feel very similar to Breath of the Wild, which is admittedly a slight letdown based on how much of that game hinged around surprise and discovery. But Tears of the Kingdom is layered (or, uh, tiered) and the way you interact with nearly everything has evolved in creative and dramatic ways, so I have little doubt that there won't be a million new things to do and see in the full game. For now, I'm giddy to not only experience it all myself but to also see how the surely massive player base will make and break this game in brilliant and silly ways. With every puzzle and conflict having such a ridiculous array of solutions, the results will likely be endlessly astonishing and entertaining, especially if you look at what hardcore Breath of the Wild players have already been doing for years in a game where it often feels like you weren't supposed to do those things. Nintendo has taken that ideology and legalized it in Tears of the Kingdom and that's immensely exciting, even if it means there will be lots of hilarious fumbling and falling along the way.
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IGN

As I write this, thinking back on my brief time with Tears of the Kingdom, my mind is racing with the things I didn't try. Few games have met my goblin tendencies with their own goblin tendencies so confidently. My looming concern is whether the bounty of tools Tears of the Kingdom provides might be overwhelming in the long run. Furthermore, just how much sustained prodding can it take? At what point might I peer behind the curtain to see something Nintendo didn't intend on me discovering? Tears of the Kingdom seems intent on allowing chaos to thrive, and that's a dangerous game to play.
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Polygon

So during my relatively brief preview, while I didn't get to see if the world of Tears of the Kingdom had the same sense of incredible density as Breath of the Wild – and it's always tempting to fall into the trap of assuming everything you haven't seen is as great as what you have – it did give me the same daunting feeling of vastness and almost endless exploration.

It would be hyperbolic to say if you were late to the party and played 100 hours of Breath of the Wild recently, rather than in 2017, you're still going to find Tears of the Kingdom completely different. However, the new additions to the core loop make do make this feel like a full sequel, not just an update. The Fuse power steals the show, letting you take an experimental approach to almost everything you encounter.
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VG247

I played 70 minutes of the game during a highly curated, in-person preview event held by Nintendo in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Journalists in attendance were the first outside of Nintendo's inner sanctum to have hands-on experience with the year's most anticipated title, which releases May 12. Those minutes washed away any fear that this is a mere update to 2017′s critical and commercial hit "Breath of the Wild," which has sold more than 29 million copies and was often bought along with the Nintendo Switch console. "Tears" will bring many features never seen before in the series.
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Washington Post
 
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