LoZ: Tears of the Kingdom - 10/10 GS 96 MC 97 OC *warning : potential spoilers*

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom^[b] is an upcoming 2023 action-adventure game developed by Nintendo EPD and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. A sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), Tears of the Kingdom retains many aspects of its predecessor, including the open-worldenvironment of Hyrule, which has been expanded to allow for more vertical exploration. Link, the protagonist of Tears of the Kingdom, is joined by Zelda and is opposed by a malevolent force that seeks to destroy Hyrule.

Following the completion of Breath of the Wild's development in 2017, a sequel was conceived after the game's downloadable content (DLC) was unable to contain all ideas put forth by the development team. Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and producer Eiji Aonuma reprise their roles in Tears of the Kingdom. A teaser trailer for Tears of the Kingdom was aired at E3 2019 with a full reveal at E3 2021. Tears of the Kingdom was initially planned for release in 2022 before being delayed to May 2023.

Development

Development started in 2017 after The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was completed.^[1] The game was announced at E3 2019 as a sequel to Breath of the Wild.^[2][3] At E3 2021, Nintendo debuted a trailer revealing gameplay, story elements and a 2022 release window,^[4] but Nintendo later changed the release window to Q2 2023.^[5][6] More information was revealed in the Nintendo Direct presentation held in September 2022, including the title Tears of the Kingdom and a release date of May 12, 2023,^[7][8] and another Nintendo Direct in February 2023 teased more gameplay elements.^[9]

Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma are reprising their roles.^[10]The game was conceived after the team was unable to use every idea planned for Breath of the Wild'sdownloadable content.^[11] New elements include floating islands above Hyrule, with players able to soar between them in a style similar to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011).^[12][13][14]

In an interview with IGN, Aonuma stated that the open world games Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim inspired members of the development team.^[15][16][17]

On March 28, 2023, Eiji Aonuma announced that development was complete. He demonstrated the new Recall ability, which can reverse time for an object, the Fuse ability, with which the player may combine multiple materials to form new weapons, the Ultrahand ability, which sticks objects together, and the Ascend ability, which allows the player to travel through ceilings.^[18][19][20] The final pre-launch trailer was released on April 13.^[21][22][23]

https://www.eurogamer.net/look-im-reviewing-the-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-trailer-and-it-gets-an-essential

Does it beat the 2017 one, to become the best game trailer ever? Does it even matter? Now we've got both! These unplayable things that aren't Zelda, but are somehow of it - collapsed and compressed. Music and movement and magic, and themselves now part of the legend: The internet went wild.

I love this - hype as a form of hope. Hype as a form of celebration and appreciation. Of Thanks for all the Zelda, and now there's soon to be one more. A gaming legend nearly back in our orbit, bringing new things to see and do and sometimes to feel.

Guys, it's new Zelda season. Let's. Fucking. Go.

Just one week to go for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! What is your hype for this game, SW? I'm going to say, 10/10 from GS, 95 from MC.

UPDATE: 10/10 GS!!

"will be worth it" is def a much better line than "we are pumping the price up because we know you'll pay it regardless lol"

Obviose going to get a 99.98% metacritic, have critics frantically masturbate in public places and change history as we know it. A tipping point.

Pretty much the reason I bought a Switch.

After Redfall?

25/10

lol Zelda really has the luxury of coming out after all these buggy and subpar games.

Just as long is it's polished and fully playable on launch, it's going to get a unspoken bonus from reviewers on top of if it's a great game to play.

9/10 here on GS is my guess, looks to samey as the last one to receive a 10/10. Expect meta to be around 92-94.

Personally I sold my switch 5 months ago so probably won’t be able to play it myself.

0% Haven't played a Zelda game since the 64 days and have no interest in changing that.

:P

@SecretPolice said:

:P

You sleeping from playing RedFall? 😜

@SolidGame_basic:

Believe it or not; RF has a certain something about it that has kept me playing a lot longer than I would have thought. ;o

Don't know if I'll actually finish the game but it has been a pleasant surprise. Ya know, expectations were pretty low. lol :P

The game looks to be better than BotW in every way. It will get knocked by some publications for performance issues on the ancient Switch hardware which will bring the scores down a bit. I’ll say it’s a 9 here and a 91 MC

9

Yea I don’t get when people say it looks the same. I don’t think they’re actually paying attention lol.

9/10

9/10.

Improvement on BotW, but does not have that freshness factor BotW had.

Zero interest. 9/10 here and 93 Meta.

0 dungeons/10 xD

Anything lower than a 9 is definitely a flop. I'll go all in and say 10/10

It'll get a 9 since it's a continuation of Breath.

Every time Gamespot gives a 10 they get to update and republish their "every game that ever got a 10 here" article. They probably can't resist.

"freshness" is overrated

9.5/10

I'm looking forward to it.

Sony spot will only give it a 9.

I’m very hyped for this game. Only one week away now. Let’s go!

Anyway I’m thinking it’ll get a 10/10 here at GS and a 93 MC.

Not really. The last one was good but i am not interested in a similar experience especially if it is just busy work.

Alright now. That was worth a chuckle!

In other words, an inferior title to Elden Ring. What? You thought i wouldn't quote you with ER in a tokt thread? Think again, pal.

@hardwenzen: are you afraid it will score higher than Elden Ring?

How could it? ER has a 10. Because the game was so long, GS took to long to review it, and like many many many other sites giving it a perfect score, its not on meta, so instead of having its 97-98, its stuck with a 96. Zelda can't surpass that with its 2005 hardware that has trouble rendering more than 5 trees on the screen.

Zelda Tears look like a movie game I watch my friend play the beginning and to much talking and you can not skip and only 5% voice acting every thing is reading most 95% of conversation. Trailer is funny bc Nintendo steal idea from Rare with Banjo Nuts & Bolds and every one call it that 😆

Inferior? They are apples and oranges.

For someone who likes themeparks, %&¤"# #%!& is the better title.

For someone who likes sandboxes, Tears of the Kingdom is the better title.

Remember when God of War Ragnarok was forgotten after about 2-3 weeks, while 2018 was fondly remembered for years?

Freshness is really important.

GS 11/10

MC 150/100

Ragnarok won numerous awards months after it's release

https://www.eurogamer.net/god-of-war-ragnarok-wins-big-at-the-dice-awards-whilst-elden-ring-scoops-the-game-of-the-year-award

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/bafta-games-awards-2023-winners-list-1235364365/

They're only apples to oranges to you because Zelda is too shallow compared to ER. You do everything in your power so people don't compare the two.

I think a 10/10 is most likely.

Yet discourse surrounding the game died really fast.

Game is the fast selling Playstation 1st party game, they were too busy playing it!

https://www.ign.com/articles/god-of-war-ragnarok-is-the-fastest-selling-first-party-game-in-playstation-history

@SolidGame_basic: Helps when you force gamers to buy it.

you mean like Wii bundling Wii Sports? Or Switch bundling Mario Kart 8?

Oh please, the ammount of player expression in Tears of the Kingdom absolutely dwarfs the ammount in Elden Ring. Which is actually kinda low.

ER is mostly reliant on execution. Whereas BotW relies heavily on creativity. Something that looks to be expanded upon in TotK.

Fastest selling doesnt necessarily tranlsate to long term interest.

@Maroxad: Your totk is creative as your weekly survival shovelware released on Steam. Taping two rocks together is not creativity unless this is the first time you're playing a game. ER has boss design, combat system, atmosphere, top notch core dungeons, amazing enemies variety, etc. Its just too much for Nintendo to handle, which ok, most of their games are made for kids anyways.

@hardwenzen: Considering people are still discovering new techniques for Breath of the Wild. That assertion is demonstrably false.

And here you go again, praising the actual themepark elements or ER. Meanwhile, you probably notice I am praising BotW for its sandbox elements.

They are different games that set out to do different things. Hence, apples and oranges.

9 billion 999 million 99 MC.

Don't care about scores. Gonna be a bunch of 9s and 10s anyways, so the guessing game isn't even fun.

Been playing it here and there since Monday. Definitely a lot of moment to moment whiplash between "oh it's more BotW" and "Holy shit this ain't BotW at all!" lol.

On the subject of "freshness", yes that will obviously be on peoples minds while playing, it's been on mine. They've added and changed much much much more than I think people realize. Don't want to spoil anything, so leaving it at that. But while most of the content has changed, along with your approach to handling it, it remains BotW at the core (durr). Still regularly getting those lightbulb moments between all the new mechanics, systems, areas, and enemy types. But a lot of the more foundational discovery of a first time BotW play obviously doesn't hit the same here. Similar to how you never quite capture the same "magic" as your first Souls game. Still a great time, but you largely understand how things work, the fish out of water feeling is gone.

Also, nitpicking, but kinda weird how they missed changing some of the low hanging fruit. It's like oh nice, they changed the field music, sounds good. *hops on a horse* oh, but this music remains the same lol. Most of the music has changed, just seems odd how they left in some 1:1 reminders that you're playing a BotW sequel. So many things like that, simple changes that could've gone a long way to adding new flavor.

Anyways, plenty I'd love to say, but I'll have to spare the details for now. The creativity in problem solving is straight up 10/10 lol. Some of the overworld puzzle solving is amped up big time. One section of sky islands felt more like an open air classic dungeon. Even the miniboss at the end was arguably more fun than anything I fought in BotW. Buuut yeah, don't want to say too much. Dope game.

And people are still discovering glitches in most speedrunning titles. Nobody cares. What's there, the tools you will be using for your playthrough are decent, but nothing worth bragging about, while everything else (bosses, atmosphere, enemies variety and design, combat system, etc) is mediocre at best.

Both of these titles are aiming for the exact same demographic, so don't try to play games.

YOur assertion fails because people are not just discovering glitches, they are also discovering new interactions.

This is why ER is so shallow by comparison. There are barely any interactions between game mechanics. And the game is just so badly balanced. Seriously imagine calling the unbalanced mess that is ER combat, good. Souls combat was already mediocre. But now, with ER, it took that mediocrity and made it incredibly unbalanced as well.

Nobody cares about your discoveries. How many people do you hear talking about your brand new interaction found in a game from 2017? Nobody but that one hardcore youtube channel that has been covering nothing but Zelda for over half a decade and that random forum post. You're trying your best to give it some heft, but you fail miserably (as per usual). You have one of the worst combat systems in a successful title that is zelda, and you talk about imbalance in a game that gives you so much choice that its simply impossible to balance? Funny Maroxad🤡

@hardwenzen: First you bring up accusations of Zelda not having any depth?

And when your accusation is refuted, your response is... nobody cares? You are a funny guy.

Your findings of interaction that you might've heard somewhere is something nobody pays attention to. Depth is what fromsoft titles have with their build system. Depth is what a game like dmc would have from its combat system. You're trying to hard to make botw look more than it ever was or will be. Let me guess, taping a stick to a rock is what you will consider as depth in tokt😆

Fully expect a 9 on GS and low-mid 90's on MC. Just hoping they did enough to differentiate from BotW.

@Maroxad said:

@hardwenzen said:

They're only apples to oranges to you because Zelda is too shallow compared to ER. You do everything in your power so people don't compare the two.

Oh please, the ammount of player expression in Tears of the Kingdom absolutely dwarfs the ammount in Elden Ring. Which is actually kinda low.

ER is mostly reliant on execution. Whereas BotW relies heavily on creativity. Something that looks to be expanded upon in TotK.

@SolidGame_basic said:

Game is the fast selling Playstation 1st party game, they were too busy playing it!

https://www.ign.com/articles/god-of-war-ragnarok-is-the-fastest-selling-first-party-game-in-playstation-history

Fastest selling doesnt necessarily tranlsate to long term interest.

Um.. it's simple, really. A LOT of people played it when it came out. There's my data analysis at work 😎