Wikipedia – Nintendo Microsite

After the release of Tears of the Kingdom, I was afraid that we would never see a new game in the style of the 2D Zelda game. Yet, I have been proven wrong when this game was announced. To be very honest, I didn’t have very high hopes for this game. Especially since this game was announced this summer and released in late September. I felt that this game going to be a game to fill a gap while the developers are working on a much larger game. Now, the game is released, and I have played through a fair chunk of it. So, what is my opinion on this game? Well, that’s what I’m going to tell you in this first impressions article, while I all invite you to leave a comment of your thoughts and/or opinions in the comment section down below.

Renewing the Echoes

After a short introduction where you play as Link, the main story of this game is introduced. There are all consuming interdimensional rifts appearing all over Hyrule, and it’s eating various people in the kingdom.

Link gets eaten by one of those rifts while freeing Zelda and when Zelda tells her father, the king, about these rifts… A new rift appears and replaces the king with an evil clone of himself. Zelda gets thrown in the dungeon and there she meets a fairy named Tri. This fairy gives Zelda a special staff where she can summon objects into the world using echoes. With those echoes, she escapes the dungeon and sets out on an adventure to save Hyrule from doom before the land is fully consumed by the rifts.

Something I always love about the Zelda games is that there is a different core mechanic at the base of the game. In this game, we get two things. We got the rifts to another dark world, but we also got the magical staff, which we can use to summon various echoes into the world. These echoes mean you can tackle this game in various different ways. But I’ll talk more about that later in this article.

In terms of story, this game is hitting all the same beats as your typical Legend of Zelda game. It might be disappointing, to some, that in this game there is no voice acting anymore apart from the grunts and various emotional noises. Personally, I think it adds to the charm of this game. That’s because the characters in this game are way more expressive. While the story isn’t going to leave you at the edge of your seat of “what’s going to happen next”, it’s still well quite enjoyable, and the more expressive characters add quite a lot to the charm and atmosphere of the game.

Something I really like is how in this game, you are free to explore the world at your own peace. This game isn’t limiting you to go in a certain order. While this game isn’t fully open world like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, it’s somewhere in between. You can tackle parts in a different order. Like the first two major dungeons can be done out of order. Each area is its self-contained puzzle, and everything you need can be found in that general area.

In my introduction of this article, I said that I was afraid that was afraid that this game would be a short one where you were able to beat it in a few hours. That it was going to be a game that’s supposed to hold players over for the “next big 3D Zelda title”. To my surprise, this game is rather lengthy for a 2,5D Zelda game. It clocks in at 25 hours of casual playtime, which is, to my knowledge, one of the longest 2,5D Zelda games.

Climbing with beds

Something I find myself doing quite a lot while playing this game was climbing the area with beds. I summoned various beds stacked on top of each other to climb a wall. Since, I wanted to know if the developers hid a secret on that cliff face.

The exploration of this version of Hyrule is a blast to do. While you visit a lot of familiar places and meet your usual suspects like the Zora and the Gerudo, it’s a treat seeing them again. The only thing I missed a bit is showing the impact of the rifts. Something that this game only tells through dialogue was how things got impacted by the rifts. I wish it was shown a bit more visually. Like different animations of the characters before and after. But maybe, Tears of the Kingdom set the bar a bit too high for those expectations where each major area had a certain curse.

In terms of gameplay, this game really leans into the echoes mechanic. It also remembers that Zelda is a princess and didn’t really have combat training. So, you have to use summoned enemies to your advantage to let them fight for you. Now, you do have a sword, but you can only use it when your power meter has charge. I always reserved that for the dungeon bosses or when the situation got pretty dicey. Since recharging that meter is either done with potions or by defeating monsters from the rift world. These enemies aren’t exactly common in the overworld, and the energy bar drains fast.

In general, this game hits the same general gameplay beats as all other Zelda games. You go from dungeon to dungeon, learning a new technique or skill, defeating the boos and moving forward to another dungeon. There are also side quests in this game, that give you a nice reward. In this game, you also have a nice system to keep track of these side quests, like in Tears of the Kingdom. Something they also brought over from that game is the cooking system to a degree.

That’s something I personally feel mixed about. Maybe it’s me, but I feel the ingredients are quite rare to come by and there is no real way to farm certain ingredients like in Breath of the Wild. I have to admit that it adds a certain charm to this game, but I feel it’s a bit under implemented here. Like when you first meet the potion creators Deku shrubs, they talk about recipes… And I had a hard time finding any.

Like in Tears of the Kingdom, you can also eat most of the ingredients without cooking them. While I personally dislike the fact you have to do two clicks to consume an item, I do understand why they did it. To avoid you consuming them too much. Yet, this is a change from the two previous games and I honestly really feel it’s a set backwards. A fine solution would be to give the player an option to switch between both systems.

Grezzo playset

This game was co-developed by Grezzo. Their previous original Zelda game was Tri Force Heroes. But, this game looks very similar in graphical style to the remake of Link’s Awakening on the Nintendo Switch from late 2019.

This game looks like a plastic toy set and it looks amazing. While I was playing this game, I felt amazed at how expressive they were able to make everything without breaking the illusion that this is a toy set brought to live by our imagination. I don’t have a lot of complaints about the visuals and animations. And most of my complaints aren’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Just like, I don’t have any complaints about the music and sound design of this game. If you take the music and sound design in a vacuum, you would say that it sounds just like very other Zelda game. It sounds like a remix of the familiar melodies we all know and love from the Zelda games. But, this isn’t a problem, since it sells the illusion that you are a child playing with a sort of Playmobil toy set of Hyrule and trying to recreate the sound effects and music of the game.

In terms of controls, this game plays like a dream. I rarely had problems with the controls and something I really like is the fact that with one press of a stick, you can see a view from on top when you feel the camera is blocking something. Now, there is one thing that I do have some things to criticize about. And that’s about the jumping.

It’s pretty difficult sometimes to judge how high Zelda can jump. I had moments in combat where I wasn’t aware I could jump on a higher ledge until I saw an enemy jumping backwards on that ledge. I also got tripped up several times with how far Zelda can jump. Her jump is shorter than I think, and the amount of times I jumped into a pit misjudging the jump is quite a lot. Something that would have helped is something a small landing shadow when Zelda was coming down. Then again, that must have been a nightmare to implement… So, maybe I should keep her shorter jump just better in mind.

Now, something else. Something I really like is how this game has two difficulty modes. I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and I have to say, I’m happy that I did. This game can lure you into a false sense of security. I wouldn’t say that this game is hard, but it isn’t a cakewalk either. You really need to keep your wits about you and think fast sometimes.

Being aware of what’s around you is also quite important since this game loves to hide things in little side area’s and using the map system is a must. I love how you can put pins and such on the map. Yet, I have to admit that I still keep notes in my phone like: “treasure in Gerudo dungeon, need to check later”.

The more I play through this game, the more I realize that the critiques I can make about this game are more on the minor side. Like how it feels like a waste of time when you are scrolling through a long list of echoes when you just want to find one. An easy solution would be to give the player an ability to favorite certain echoes. But then again, the sort function in the quick menu has “most used”, “recently learned” … So, it’s kinda that.

Now, you have two save slots in this game. So, you can play through this game and let a friend or a sibling play through a different slot. Now, this game also autosaves for you frequently, in case you forget to save. The game also keeps like several autosaves in case you want to return to an earlier point.

Something I really like is how this game also has a quick travel system. The system works similarly like an owl statue in Majora’s Mask or a water vane in Link Between Worlds. It makes it easy when you feel stumped by a puzzle and want to return later. The fast travel locations are very fairly placed all over the land.

While I went quite critical in this game, the more I played it, the more it won me over. This game is a new 2,5D Zelda adventure game I hope we were going to see again. The last new, non remake 2,5D Zelda game was released almost 11 years ago. And, I’m so happy to see a return to this style. I’d love to see a this style also making an appearance very so often since it’s clear there are still various unique ways to explore Hyrule and tell a story about the Hyrule legend without going fully 3D.

Apart from a few small complaints you read in this article, I honestly don’t have any major complaints about this game. This is a game I’m going to finish for sure, since I’m enjoying my time with this title quite a lot. If you are into the series, I highly recommend this title to you. If you enjoy exploration and playing with unique mechanics, I also think this game is for you. This game is totally worth it’s price tag and it pleasantly surprised me.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

In most of my favorite video games I find that the famous “less is more” adage typically applies… I appreciate when a game sticks to what it does best and avoids the temptation to artificially pad the length of the game with broken mini-games or pointless fluff.  While side quests that add to the lore of the world are fun, excessive filler content or meaningless “follow this guy” missions only water down an otherwise excellent gaming experience… and may even dilute the story so much that a fantastic game is completely unenjoyable.

In our real world we often find “less is more” as well… each and every word we speak or write carries resonance far beyond what we may have intended, and even a well-meaning point of view can be diminished by the unintended context of the words that surround it.  The words we speak are powerful, and when we exhibit self-control over our written and spoken words we can deliver a message from the Lord with His love, grace, and clarity.  If we struggle with “opening our mouth and inserting our feet”, remember that short and sweet ensures His words are heard clear and complete.

In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise. Proverbs 10:19

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3:17-18

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From Calamity Ganon to the end of the world, The Legend of Zelda games are home to some seriously scary enemies and disasters. Players have faced a lot of enemies over the years, with the central antagonist Ganon behind most of the evil. But alongside these terrifying battles is a whole collection of kooky and memorable characters that have enhanced the player's journey.

Steam store page – Twitter/X – Wikipedia

I know that I’m extremely late when it comes to the Palworld hype. Palworld released in early January 2024 and currently, since there aren’t a lot of updates dropping, the hype died out. Yet, the roadmap looks extremely promising. Since this game is still in early access, I’m always hesitant in writing about the game. Since, you never know which mechanics or things will change and evolve during the early access period. Especially since we are currently only at v0.1.5.1. So, I decided to hold off on my first impression/review article for now. But, I wanted to talk about this game. So, here are some things I’d love to see in the full version of Palworld or even in one of the next updates.

First of all, what is a Palworld?

Palworld is a combination of several games, all thrown into one. It’s easy to describe Palworld with saying which games it combines.

Foremost, at its core, it’s a game you can somewhat compare to Ark Survival Evolved. When I first started playing, I noticed the similarities right away. The way how you have a crafting system to build your base, and you have monsters running around you can tame/catch is totally here as well.

I haven’t played a lot of Ark, so I can’t say if this mechanic is also present in Ark… But, the fact you can use your monsters to preform tasks in your base reminded me quite a lot of The Survivalists. A game where you are stranded on an island, and you can train monkeys to preform actions for you. The big difference is that now certain monsters can only preform certain tasks, instead of the monkeys just copying you.

Now, a lot of other articles describe this game as Pokémon with guns. After playing this game, I think that’s a somewhat unfair comparison. When I think Pokémon, I think a journey with gyms and an evil team. I think turn based battles and a big ending tournament as its conclusion. While some Pals share a very similar design language to some Pokémon, most of the mechanics of what makes a Pokémon game aren’t in this game. The other big mechanic is the capture mechanic, but by now this isn’t exclusive to Pokémon games anymore. Especially since we have games like Coromon.

There are also influences of the latest Zelda games. Especially Tears of the Kingdom. There are these huge, strong bosses roaming around on the huge open world map, you can beat at any time. Also, the korok seeds to upgrade your character are also here in the form of effigies and Pal souls to upgrade your monsters.

This game really feels like the developers looked at all the games they liked playing, looked at what worked and threw it all together into one pot and shook it until it all clicked together. The mechanics of this game really click extremely well together. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t be surprised if I said that this was a finished game.

There are some silly bugs here and there and in some spots, this game feels unfinished. But, overall the game we have currently is amazing and if you would enjoy a game like this after reading what I wrote here… Give this game a try. I only told you the most basic things in this game. This game is a survival game with elements from a lot of other games like those I have already mentioned but also Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders and various others.

Let’s talk improvements

While the game is a lot of fun to play at the moment, there are some things I wish that were improved or updated. While you get a lot of warnings that there are: save corruption bugs, crashes and bugs… Besides sometimes the lighting engine giving up for a moment or the AI of the pals or enemies doing some funky stuff, I haven’t seen too many worrying things.

Take for example this floating rock screenshot here. I have explored roughly half of the map after 35 hours of play, and this was the only floating rock I could find. That’s extremely impressive, especially since if you look at the size of the map… It isn’t small at all. In the future, new islands and area’s will be added so if they deliver them with this kind of quality, I have no complaints.

Well, I do have one recommendation. I’d love to see more landmarks in the map. Currently, almost all the landmarks in the game are based upon the terrain. I’d love to see more villages or ruins of them. I loved finding these things in the Zelda games and letting my mind wonder what happened there. It’s a very difficult balance act, since too many landmarks would make the map feel crowded and limit the amount of possible base locations.

Basically, I’d love more reasons for me to go exploring these regions and get unique rewards. Besides completing the Paldex, there isn’t a lot of reason to go exploring in certain area’s. And when you have set up the right kind of farms and work stations for your pals in your bases, the chance you run out of resources is rather small.

Speaking about bases, currently you can only have three bases. Most likely, this is done to improve the multiplayer performance. Since, the game emulates the three bases in the background, so you can easily have a base close to big ore clusters to farm those while you are working in your other base. If you don’t place a cap on those, it’ll tank the performance of any computer or server. Yet, I’d give the tools to the player to increase the cap. Personally, I think Minecraft has one of the best systems with the game rules. You can almost change anything to your playstyle and even disable or remove caps that are there for performance reasons. You already have quite a lot of toggles and sliders in Palworld, but I’d also expand on that.

Currently, the building system is decent, but it needs a lot of polishing up. The biggest problem I have with the building system are the stairs. It’s a nightmare sometimes to place stairs to go from one to another floor. Also, why can’t we place a full wall next to stairs? Most likely because some pals their hitbox would do some crazy stuff? Also, placing certain items or crafting stations on elevated floors doesn’t always work the best.

On top of that, besides the visual look of the floors, walls and ceilings, what’s the point of being able to unlock stone foundations? As a test, I tried to build a high tower with wood and one with stone. I didn’t find a difference. I’d love to see more meaning to what I unlock. Granted, stone can’t burn down. So, if you have any raids with flamethrower or fire enemies, your base isn’t in danger. But what’s the difference between stone and metal, then?

I honestly think that it’d be a bad idea if PocketPair only created more content and not make the mechanics have more depth. For example, something I’d love to see them implementing in the pal task system is a mechanic I love in Cult of the Lamb. When you welcome a new member in your cult, you can set the main focus of a member there. I’d love to see that you are able to set the main focus per pal. For example, when things are damaged in the base after a raid, you select one pal to go and get the repair kits and repair all damages first before going to do their usual tasks. Or when you have a pal that can do multiple things, and you mostly need that pal to pick up items, you could disable their other abilities. Maybe we need some items for that and those items can be only found in the wild, and we need to hunt for them. That’s an interesting idea to lure players out of their bases.

Dreaming like a madman

There are some UI elements I’d love to see change as well. First, I’d love to have a mini-map. The compass at the top of the screen only shows things in roughly 300m range, and that’s too short. Especially since in some areas the warp spots are spread quite far apart. A mini-map where you can pin certain things like the nearest warp spot would be amazing.

Secondly, in terms of the weapons. I’d love to see their stats before I craft them. Now it’s a guessing game that if I craft a certain weapon, if it’s going to be stronger or better than the one I currently have. It’d also be amazing if the durability is shown outside the inventory as well. There is some space in the UI element at the bottom right, so why not show it?

Now, in terms of the inventory. Sometimes I have issues with combining stacks of items. Sometimes I have to do it twice or thrice before they are combined. This is a rather small things, but outside of those… I don’t have a lot of small quality of life things that I could recommend. Maybe that if you sleep during the day in your bed, you can skip to night if you are hunting the nightlife pals?

Maybe there is one quality of life feature I think would be amazing. Quite often, when I’m hunting the stronger pals, I have my pal instructions set on “Focus on the same enemy”. I think it would have an amazing option if you have a feature where you are able to say to your pal if they are allowed to kill the wild pal or not. Since, if they are dead, you can’t capture them.

There is one attack that is a double-edged sword. In the Pokémon games, you have the self-destruct attack. You also have this one in Palworld, yet, some wild pals with this attack always take it over their other attacks. These bee pals always swarm me and instead of being able to weaken them, so I can catch them, I just get blown up. You barely have a chance to do any damage to weaken them to make capturing possible.

I just remembered one other quality of life feature. You can create saddles, gloves and other things to do special things with your pals. But, why I am allowed to create more than one? I mean, I can only use one of them at a time and they can be interchanged. So, if you make a saddle for a certain bird pal e.g. Helzephyr, that means you can use it on all Helzephyrs you catch.

But the biggest quality of life feature PocketPair could add is a mini-map inside caves/dungeons. The times I almost got lost in these caves is insane. Especially since there are only a handful of rooms in these and it’s easy to get turned around and confused.

Now, to completely change the subject… I wish there was more music in the game. The soundtrack in this game is amazing. Sadly, there isn’t enough in the game at the moment, so there are some silent moments. A little bit more ambient tracks would go a really long way in this game.

But, I saved one of my biggest things for last. That is inventory management. This is a total pain in bases. Since pals can put things inside chests, you can forget organisation. Thankfully, while crafting, the game pulls from all resources in your base, but if you need a certain item to use at another base, have fun to go searching through all your chests. What I usually do, if I can, is start crafting an item with the one I want to move and then cancel it. Since it drops the resources then and there. Now, how to solve this without breaking the game and the idea that pals can put things in chests? What if you have a new skill that pals can have? An organisation skill and depending on the level, they either put red things with red things or make a weapons chest and come to complain to you when there aren’t enough chests for their organisation?

If your base is fully set up, the proper of a lack of depth starts to show as well. When you build your base, why should you return to it besides needing to craft or repair your weapons? Give us some activities we can do in our base when we build them. I mean come on, we even have the amusement furniture set. If only we could play some mini-games with our pals to increase their sanity for example? Since currently, there is not a lot you can do when a pal is stressed.

Of course, a certain balance needs to be maintained. The more things a pal can interact with, the more chance you have to create lag or overwhelm the player. Also, the more depth you create, the more things you have to maintain and maybe that’s not the type of game that PocketPair wants to create. How I currently see Palworld is a playground sandbox in the schoolyard. It’s an amazing playground where you can make your own fun but it’s only part of the schoolyard and only has a swing, some monkey bars, a climb rack, a small castle and a slide. It’s all solid built and amazing to spend your time in… But, then you notice the potential this sandbox has to grow. What if we enlarged that sandbox with another castle, so the multiplayer can be player vs player as well? Or wait, why don’t we add an underground to that sandbox?

All I’m saying is that currently Palworld has an amazing foundation. The biggest issue at the moment is that the game lacks depth. While the current roadmap has a lot of expansions and more content, I hope PocketPair doesn’t forget to also make it more than just surface level. For example, imagne that the raid bosses can be captured and barely have an unique skills. Why should the player do the raids then? What reward do you get out of it? Not all mechanics can be fun because they are enjoyable to do. Players will get bored and they will look for a way to spice things up or to challenge themselves.

Now what that said, I’m going to close off this article. I’m quite excited for the future of Palworld and I’m going to wait a few more updates before I decide to write a review on the game. But overall, I’m really liking what I see. The basis of an amazing title is here already and I think we are going to get an even better game when this comes out of early access. Let’s wait and see what happens when the first big updates drop. Especially the raid bosses that got teased a few weeks ago.

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. What do you think of PalWorld and what should be added or changed? Let me know in the comment section down below. Also, what do you think of my idea’s? I’m curious, feel free to leave a comment about that one to. But, I also hope to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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Over a year since its launch, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a rare example of a sequel that managed to invent the wheel for a second time. Where Breath of the Wild reintroduced the world to the sense of adventure that literally birthed The Legend of Zelda as we know it, Tears of the Kingdom builds upon the foundation that was laid by its predecessor and actively encourages players to go beyond the boundaries that were set in the previous title. The result is a revolutionary game that takes a familiar and well-trodden world and elevates it to - literally - new heights while similarly evoking a sense of nostalgia as players explore a world that has naturally changed with time.

My first playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was truly made when I stumbled upon one of the final areas of the game by complete accident. My own story of exploring the reimagined world of Hyrule will be very different from anybody else's and these are the stories we share. These memorable moments of discovery and excitement stick with players for years after they put the game down, even more than the so-called "Legend" itself.

Link’s new abilities in Tears of the Kingdom expand the scope of puzzle-solving, with a renewed focus on physics and building. This approach to puzzle-solving is completely unique to this title and flourishes at every opportunity it gets. One particular example manages to capture this extraordinary feat in what at first appears to be something completely mundane - an unfolding bridge. Polygon has already deconstructed this (and more) impressive feats hiding in the Shrines and Dungeons of Tears of the Kingdom - and so I link to their impressive analysis here. 

I wish to focus on the game's physics because I want people to know that I do find Tears of the Kingdom to be an exceptional experience when I play it. No other open-world game has captured my interest in the same way, with almost boundless potential to experiment and create solutions to the game's various open-ended problems. And it’s precisely because of this innovation that I find Tears of the Kingdom is also one of the most confusing games I’ve ever played. 

Where the gameplay (literally) soars to new heights, the story of Tears of the Kingdom is one that paradoxically represents the polar opposite, holding itself tightly to the legacy of The Legend of Zelda, at the cost of its own identity. 

Leading up to the game's release, we were promised a Zelda experience unlike we'd ever had. A uniquely dark atmosphere was present all throughout the game’s marketing, with imaginations running wild about the depths to which Nintendo would go in this new entry. The image of Link losing his arm was particularly striking to veteran Zelda fans and Nintendo fans in general - not many of their characters are shown to effectively lose limbs on screen.  The closest is Samus Aran and her experience with the X-Virus in 2004’s Metroid Fusion, and even this was portrayed mostly through text. Tears of the Kingdom was a new frontier for Nintendo as storytellers. 

While Tears of the Kingdom manages to commit to this promise in its opening set piece - with the creative excuse of reducing Link’s health down to the classic three hearts - this promise of new ideas is quickly disposed of in light of a familiar structure and general progression that seemingly betrays the ambition that exists in the gameplay. On a surface level, Tears of the Kingdom is about metamorphosis and change. Characters we’re familiar with are distorted and changed to challenge our perception of this familiar world, exploring how these changes offer new opportunities.  This extends from the large scale all the way down to the minute details. The geography of Hyrule has changed in the six years between Breath of the Wild and this game, with the addition of the Sky Islands and the Depths being the most prominent changes to the layout of the world as we know it.

While Tears of the Kingdom manages to commit to this promise in its opening set piece - with the creative excuse of reducing Link’s health down to the classic three hearts - this promise of new ideas is quickly disposed of in light of a familiar structure and general progression that seemingly betrays the ambition that exists in the gameplay.

The addition of layered subterranean cave systems similarly adds to this sense of evolution and natural change with time. The previously desolate Tarrey Town has burgeoned into an industrial hub for Hyrule’s rapidly developing construction industry, as a direct result of Link’s efforts in the previous game. This sense of consistency and tangibility between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is a part of the appeal of a direct sequel like this. Players are rewarded for having engaged with the previous game with their discoveries in the sequel. Even being able to call upon the same horse as you had in Breath of the Wild is a satisfying moment of continuity that reminds you that you are returning to this world as an experienced adventurer rather than beginning all over again. Despite being lowered back down to 3 hearts, you still have some tricks you can rely on, and knowledge that you’ve gained. 

These subtle but meaningful moments of continuity are then confusingly undercut in this game’s complete refusal to engage with the main narrative of the previous game. While I wouldn’t expect every shrine from the previous game to be present in this one, I was expecting an explanation as to where all these old things have gone to make room for the new. This extends more significantly to the disappearance of the Divine Beasts from Breath of the Wild. The four Divine Beasts stood as the primary objectives in the previous game and also doubled as that game’s iteration of classic Zelda dungeons. They also stood as landmarks against the natural landscapes of Hyrule, with a distinct sense of purpose and style in the areas they existed in. They’re borderline inseparable from the places where they reside, and yet they’ve seemingly vanished without any explanation. Where Divine Beast Vah Medoh used to stand above Rito Village as a guardian protector, the robotic bird is conspicuously missing and leaves a massive void in its wake.

The ancient Guardians of infamy from Breath of the Wild have all but completely vanished in Tears of the Kingdom - with a single one being stapled to the top of an ancient laboratory, without any form of explanation. While it was clearly a focus not to alienate players who hadn’t played the original, there is something missing in not acknowledging the journey that most players will have been on in the previous outing. Tears of the Kingdom attempts to have it both ways and therefore succeeds on neither scale when respecting new and old players. This inconsistent approach to storytelling leads to an awkward outcome where no group of players can be fully satisfied with the way that things have been continued in this highly anticipated sequel. 

Beyond the links to the original game, Tears of the Kingdom also betrays its innovative and transformative gameplay in terms of its own story above all else. Despite Link losing an arm and gaining Rauru's assistance, Mineru becoming a robot-possessing spirit and Zelda literally becoming an ancient Dragon, all of these elements are rendered moot by the end of the game. Link regains his own arm, Mineru disappears and Zelda is back to being a human again. These are pivotal moments throughout the story and are massively impactful when they happen - but I can't help thinking there should be some permanence behind these moments of sacrifice. In the case of Zelda, her decision to become the Light Dragon is one that epitomises a noble sacrifice that allows Link to take the final step to restore some semblance of order and safety to the world.

On paper, Zelda herself is left as a dragon for centuries; this moment is more than impactful on its own. So for her to be restored without much challenge by the game's end really feels like a "safe" option. Despite the time-spanning and long-reaching sacrifices that have been made to get to the end of Tears of the Kingdom, the game ends as every other - Ganondorf is defeated and peace is restored to Hyrule, with Link and Zelda standing on the other side.

Link travels to the four regions - again. Link fixes their problems - again. And then reclaims the Master Sword - again. For players jumping from Breath of the Wild, there is a recognisable formula at play that punctuates the experience with an odd sense of repetition, for a game built on avoiding linearity. Some interesting ideas and setpieces are held within a recognisable sequence that feels like it misses a beat or two through a dedication to choosing your own objectives. Open-world game design and linear stories can mix and often do so with compelling results.

This commitment to safety is prevalent to the extent that it feels like the game is actively acknowledging that the transformations that these characters undergo are harmful and the better outcome is to return to the status quo. Return to what we know instead of embracing new and exciting new opportunities - which is oddly self-fulfilling.

These subtle but meaningful moments of continuity are then confusingly undercut in this game’s complete refusal to engage with the main narrative of the previous game.

Herein lies the paradox at the heart of Tears of the Kingdom, and the greater trilogy that includes Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity. Despite pushing the greater Zelda series to new heights in terms of gameplay styles and ideas, the stories are so afraid of embracing those changes to create something truly new. The transformative nature of these games and their narratives contradict themselves to create an overarching series that feels muddled and lost in its own ideas while trying to please everybody in the process. The champions die in Breath of the Wild, only for the plot of Age of Calamity to be a time travel story about helping them to survive. There's no weight.

The so-called "Legend of Zelda" has proven to be a restrictive narrative framework where each story is almost obligated to end in the same way. And while I'm not daring to say that there should be a game where Link and Zelda canonically fail in their mission - it feels like this framework is really holding Nintendo back from exploring some exciting new potential for the series and the stories that it tells.

For how wonderfully innovative the mechanics of Ultrahand, Fuse, and Recall are, they deserve a far more exciting story to be used in than something as muddled as this. When all is said and done, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a game that is far more fun to play than it is to experience, thanks to the clunkiness of the story, and that's the biggest shame of all. I can only hope that by moving beyond this iteration of Hyrule, we're able to enter a new era for the series and really see some exciting ideas emerge.

Getting the Master Sword in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom feels great. After dozens of hours of dealing with ugly fused weapons and broken gear, you finally get the sword of legend. But it’s still far from perfect. While it can’t break, it can lose its power and have to recharge. The Master Sword from the…

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Who needs another Nintendo Direct when the company is willing to randomly dish on its next Zelda game with an unexpected five-minute trailer? The latest info dump for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom gives a tour of the Hyrule players will get to explore in the series’ latest top-down sequel for Switch, and it…

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Classic titles may get a lot of flack, but their designs were second to none, so we’ve decided to rank them! These posters highlight some of the best classic titles out there – along with some beautifully recreated and original illustrations.

For the sake of transparency, ‘retro’ has been defined here as anything that was released before the eighth console generation. So, before the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch’s release.

The Switch is in its eighth year. That’s longer than any Nintendo system has gone without getting a successor. But the company is still bullish on the hybrid console’s future even as fans wait to hear about a Switch 2 as soon as this September. Nintendo is planning to sell over 12 million new Switches this year and…

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Nintendo’s big June Direct showcase delivered the biggest headlines of the week, with its reveal of Echoes of Wisdom, a new Zelda game in which you actually play as the titular princess, as well as a new Mario & Luigi RPG and, yes, Metroid Prime 4. Read on for all the reveals from that event as well as some of the…

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Sometimes all it takes to grab my attention is one trailer. One good teaser. And that’s exactly how I discovered Blud, a newly released 2D Zelda-like action game about vampires, evil tech bros, and high school. I saw its release trailer on Twitter, thought “Wow that looks cool!” and started playing it. The game, with…

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Ever since Nintendo confirmed that The Legend of Zelda has an official, branching timeline, fans have been curious about precisely when every new game in Nintendo’s beloved action-adventure franchise takes place. That includes the newly announced The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. While nothing’s confirmed yet,…

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Enlarge / "N-tel (64) Inside" (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

In recent years, we've reported on multiple efforts to reverse-engineer Nintendo 64 games into fully decompiled, human-readable C code that can then become the basis for full-fledged PC ports. While the results can be impressive, the decompilation process can take years of painstaking manual effort, meaning only the most popular N64 games are likely to get the requisite attention from reverse engineers.

Now, a newly released tool promises to vastly reduce the amount of human effort needed to get basic PC ports of most (if not all) N64 games. The N64 Recompiled project uses a process known as static recompilation to automate huge swaths of the labor-intensive process of drawing C code out of N64 binaries.

While human coding work is still needed to smooth out the edges, project lead Mr-Wiseguy told Ars that his recompilation tool is "the difference between weeks of work and years of work" when it comes to making a PC version of a classic N64 title. And parallel work on a powerful N64 graphic renderer means PC-enabled upgrades like smoother frame rates, resolution upscaling, and widescreen aspect ratios can be added with little effort.

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Fans have been waiting for Nintendo to launch a Switch 2 for years now. It was reportedly due out sometime in 2024 before getting delayed to next year. And while the company recently hinted that the Switch successor will be revealed later this year, it could still be a longtime before it actually comes out. What games…

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I do not envy anyone working on the previously announced Legend of Zelda movie. Whereas, with Mario, they needed only make cute cartoons and load the film with jokes and easter eggs, Zelda feels so much more nuanced, and any angle is likely to displease many. Filmmaker Wes Ball has recently made it clear that his…

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There is a reason why Minishoot’ Adventure has that apostrophe in its name, but it isn’t a good enough one, so we’ll rightly ignore it from now on. But this certainly isn’t a game you should ignore: despite the awful name, this is the best Zelda-like 2024 has offered so far, and it’s also somehow a bullet-hell…

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Katsucon, the first major convention of 2024, took place in National Harbor, Maryland over the February 16-18 weekend, and there were some incredible looks on display. The three-day fan convention kicked off 2024 with style, offering up some incredible cosplay that will serve as inspiration for the rest of the year.

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Xbox Game Pass is one helluva deal. For between $10.99 and $16.99 each month, you get access to a large vault of games from a variety of genres. Each month sees a handful of titles leave the subscription service, but Microsoft always seems to ensure there are more than 400 games on offer. That does mean that you never…

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In the spirit of the season of love we asked you, dear readers, to share with us your biggest video game crushes. The answers are in, and they are varied. Turns out there are a lot of characters to love across countless video games. Heroes, villains, sidekicks, you name it, somebody is crushing on them. While there…

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