pTears of the Kingdom is just massive! I've played well over 60 hours and still feel like there’s so much left to explore and discover. The game is a huge world to immerse in. Thankfully, I’ve been able to take time to do that. And somehow the game continues to impress. I can see myself playing the latest and greatest Zelda game for a long time to come.
My recent play sessions have seen me doing the usual, which is a great thing. Exploration and discovery are excellent in TotK. Sometimes I’ll start with a particular goal in mind but instead get totally sidetracked — yet I don’t mind. For instance, I meant to find the Light Dragon…but I ended up rocketing out of a certain sky tower in order to paraglide down nearby chasms I’ve not yet entered. The point was to activate new light roots as I continually seek to reveal the entire Depths map; I made good progress.
In another session, I noticed a slight color variation of a small object on the Hyrule map. I decided to check it out; it was basically nothing in an otherwise interesting little wooded area surrounded by foothills. But then while collecting plants there — and finding yet another Korok! — I made a discovery: a new cave. Of course, I explored it, which led to…a new Shrine!
You see, there’s always something else to see or do in this game and it’s always rewarding on some level.
In the midst of this, I’m always finding new ways to assemble contraptions with the Ultrahand ability, or fuse new weapons together. For example, after more than 60 hours, I just now learned of something called a Spring Shield. A Spring is a type of Zonai device that does what it sounds like. Fuse it to a shield, and then every time an enemy attacks you while you’re defending, the spring releases and sends the enemy flying back, doing damage, and protecting you from injury. It’s cool to use, is actually useful, and is new-to-me this far into the game.
Sometimes I manage to focus on main quests instead of side quests or doing my own thing. So now I think I’ll pursue the final two Regional Phenomena so I can obtain their special abilities in order to help me traverse the world and engage enemies.
Or maybe I’ll hold off.
And therein lies some of the genius of open-world Zelda. You can basically do what you want, when you want.
The other genius is how each system seamlessly melds together, creating well-rounded gameplay in a fully-realized world. Cooking, crafting, fighting, and exploring are intertwined by Nintendo’s expert game development.
It’s so much fun, it sparks wonder, and…it’s on graphics hardware that’s about 7 years old.
Amidst talk about the Switch life-cycle nearing its end and new hardware purportedly releasing late next year, here we now have an open-world Zelda adventure so big and so good — GotY potential — that I scratch my head, “Why do we need new hardware? This game is so great on the current Switch!”
A Switch successor is coming one way or another. Sure, it will enable newer, better, and bigger games. But I hope it at least will run older games like Tears of the Kingdom. It’s too good to leave behind.