I’m a huge Legend of Zelda fan and have played countless hours of Breath of the Wild, so I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of Tears of the Kingdom. And now the wait is over! I hopped out of bed around 4AM on May 12th to get started playing. So here’s my first impressions of this much anticipated game.

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The game starts with Link and Zelda exploring under the castle and finding mysterious murals on the wall telling the story about the Gods and their mingling with the people of Hyrule. Zelda does all the talking as usual, while Link nods stoically. Next thing you know, they’ve somehow released a demon king and everything goes to hell.

Link wakes up later with some new tats and a Witchblade style enchanted arm. The Master Sword has been mostly destroyed leaving just a mangled and broken blade. Zelda is nowhere in site, and once again Link sets off on an adventure to save the princess.

But this times things look a bit different! He seems to be in some sky world environment made of different floating islands. A paraglider sure would be handy to find!

Similar, But Different, and More Difficult

I feel that Tears of the Kingdom starts off a bit slow, but it’s to help you learn to use all the new things you’re going to encounter. I didn’t like the landscape at first, but realized that it was just different in the Sky Islands and once I completed the four shrines there and jumped down to Hyrule, everything looked familiar again.

But this game is challenging! You are going to need to use your brain as much as your fighting skills to get through this. I started playing BOTW with my son when he was four, and there’s no way a four year old would be able to figure out all the different options you need to master to play this game. It’s on another level. Literally! There’s three maps you’ll eventually be working with for the sky, land and underground.

Links Special Powers

Tears of the Kingdom was designed to make you think, and sometimes it’s asking a bit much when you just want to run around and play. You get new powers that can be used in a lot of different ways. One of the first powers you get is Ultrahand, where you can pick things up and move them, similar to Magnesis in Breath of the Wild. Seems simple enough.

But then you get Fuse, where you can fuse things together to create new weapons with new powers. So you can fuse a rock to your sword and break down walls. Or fuse spikes to your shield, and bombs to your arrows and so on. The possibilities are a bit mind boggling. Like, you just want to pick your weapon and whack some monsters, but now instead of picking the best weapon you actually have to craft it.

Monsters and Constructs

The guardians are gone, and now you have to look out for robot type things constructs. Some are good and talk to you, and some are bad. Once you get down to Hyrule, you’ll find all the usual bokoblins and moblins and all that. There’s also new monsters you’ll encounter, like a giant worm thing attached to walls in the caves and a big glowing frog that gives you a snowflake crystal that I don’t know what to do with yet.

Meals and Potions

Cooking meals and potions works on the same concept as BOTW. Some of the combos will be familiar, but you’ll also run across a lot of new ingredients that create new effects like making you glow, or stick to walls in the rain. They’ve also made it easier to access the recipes if you want to recreate meals.

First Impression: Totally worth it! Yes, go get it now if you are a Zelda fan- Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Although I do recommend Breath of the Wild first if you haven’t played it. You don’t have to do that one first, but I think it would be hard to go in reverse because this one has everything BOTW has, but more. And you don’t want to miss out on the awesome game that BOTW is on its own.

It’s a little surreal to be running around Hyrule and recognizing things from from BOTW. The game creators really did an amazing job creating a part two to the story. There’s so much to this new one! It’s going to take so long to get through everything I’m pretty sure I’ll be playing it for a while. And I have no complaints about that. 🙂