The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: First Impressions and New Features

The eagerly awaited game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be released on May 12. Fans have had to wait longer than we hoped for the sequel to the 2017 hit Breath of the Wild. However, this does not change the fact that there are huge expectations associated with the arrival of the new product. In my opinion, the previous part is rightly ranked among the best-rated games of all time. And this brings with it at the same time extraordinary pressure on developers. It would undoubtedly be very difficult to deal with such a responsibility under all circumstances. It’s all the more challenging because Breath of the Wild entered the market together with the Switch, and Tears of the Kingdom, on the other hand, only comes to the market at a time when there are already loud speculations about its possible successor. The two titles end up being separated by a longer time than we thought. And this raises a number of questions. For example, whether the new product will be innovative enough, or whether it can still perform well even on aging hardware. I won’t offer you clear answers yet, but I can share my first impressions from my own gameplay.

Thanks to the domestic representation of ConQuest entertainment, the Nintendo company invited me as the only journalist for the Czech Republic and Slovakia to its European headquarters in Frankfurt am Main to try out Tears of the Kingdom. I had the opportunity to spend a mysterious morning with the game during breaks and find out a little more about it. There is no point in repeating what we already know about the game at this point. After all, it’s not much. Just take a look for yourself at the game’s official website, Nintendo’s product page or Wikipedia. Of course, there are even more theories. The developers are scrupulously hiding all the details, and not much has changed during my visit. For example, I can’t tell you anything new about the story. While we know about other games long before the last one is released and their presentations are full of details, we know “almost nothing” about the new Zelda in comparison.

I can tell you what I played and how it affected me. I had the opportunity to personally look at the places that were presented in the recent gameplay demo and try out the new functions that the authors demonstrated there. I certainly won’t try to disprove the impression that Tears of the Kingdom feels and looks like a direct descendant of Breath of the Wild. That’s just the way it is. The basis of the game remained the same, as well as controls, many skills, but also the interface or sound effects that accompany some actions. But instead, I’ll focus on the real news. I gradually got my hands on the recently introduced Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend and Recall skills. But before I get closer to them, I can say that I played two different segments, moving around the new sky islands, encountering new enemies here, and suggest that I got here in a different way than the aforementioned gameplay demonstrated. In it, Link swung into the clouds with the help of the aforementioned Recall function, when he “returned” a stone that fell from it back to the sky. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you under what circumstances I found myself among the clouds, but it means that there will undoubtedly be more paths leading here.

I experienced firsthand how effective it can be to create a guided missile from a classic arrow using the eye of a fallen enemy. He improved the shield, played with fire and created new unique weapons that can be both more destructive and more durable.

Now that I’ve nailed the Recall skill, I’ll continue with it. Simply put, it is the ability to rewind the movement. But you don’t return time and the whole world, but you return only one specific object, for example. A typical example was when the enemies launched a large ball at me down the bridge, but I was able to return their discourtesy in an instant and knock them down with their own weapon. When they ran for the ball, I had their gift returned to them after the same journey. But there are many more practical uses. Ascend’s other new skill isn’t complicated to explain, but it’s also very useful. It allows you to “float” through the ceiling of a building or cave to a higher floor or even to the top of a rock. It will be an alternative way to quickly reach high places. And then there are the aforementioned Ultrahand and Fuse features, each of which offers something different, but both significantly expand the crafting options here.

Thanks to Fuse, you can experiment with different objects and combine them with weapons, shields or arrows. Thanks to this, you create a completely new, more effective and often very unexpected piece of equipment. It seems bizarre, but it’s very addictive and the game rewards you for experimenting. I experienced firsthand how effective it can be to create a guided missile from a classic arrow using the eye of a fallen enemy. He improved the shield, played with fire and created new unique weapons that can be both more destructive and more durable. Ultrahand then allows you to manipulate objects in your inventory and surroundings, glue them together and simply build something from them. You can use ordinary things as well as various special interactive elements for this. And it won’t just stop at the elementary round. You will work your way to different methods of propulsion, energy replenishment and control. Plus, it all works great thanks to sophisticated physics. The previous game already charmed us with how it was possible to experiment and rely on common sense. Thanks to this, fans have been coming up with new ideas and surprising discoveries for years. The situation will undoubtedly repeat itself and probably go even further.

At the same time, crafting is very easy. I was worried that it wouldn’t seem too complicated, but on the contrary, it is simple in its principles, and your imagination will limit you. You will understand how everything works very easily. It depends more on whether and how you can use it. Thanks to the Ultrahand skill and functional physics, I very quickly built, for example, a fire-breathing car, a hot-air balloon with a functional burner, or even an improvised but fully controllable airplane. It’s really very simple and addictive at the same time. At the same time, I was very interested in all these options in the recent presentation, but I wasn’t sure if I would really enjoy them in practice, or if I would want to use them. If I’d rather not just see what others create, but not play conservatively myself. Now I don’t have that fear anymore. I certainly don’t want to automatically state that I’m sure that crafting will appeal to absolutely everyone and that even those who generally don’t like it will like it. But I can imagine that in the new Zelda they will give him a chance and some of those who don’t build much elsewhere will like him.

But if they do not convince you, the authors should not force you to build. At this point, I’m still not quite sure if you can actually avoid it completely, although it’s been suggested to me that every situation has multiple solutions. However, in the clouds I came across puzzles that included crafting. I’m not sure to what extent I would have bypassed or conquered such places otherwise. But it is possible that it will work, I just haven’t figured it out, or I don’t know all the circumstances. It just made me think that building somewhere could also be a way to solve a puzzle or overcome an obstacle, similar to how we used special skills in shrines last time. We have to wait for the answers. But I really enjoyed the moments when I had the opportunity to go back somewhere and repeat the same situation using a different procedure. When it comes to, for example, how to conquer an enemy area, the game will again undoubtedly be very varied and let you try different approaches.

Thanks to the news in this world, players will experiment even more, they will spend a long time finding original solutions, building new impressive machines and discovering tricks with which they will very likely surprise even the authors themselves.

In conclusion, I cannot avoid control and technical processing. The new skills took a while to get used to, and in some places I felt like using an item from the inventory when building or combining elements could be more intuitive. But at the same time I will add that it goes into the blood quite quickly. As for the graphics, I was only partially reassured by the playable demo, since I’ve only seen a small part of the world so far. I liked that the game is apparently going to be even more diverse in terms of diverse environments. I have to admit that thanks to the styling, skillful developers manage to divert your attention from examining possible imperfections. It’s also to Nintendo’s credit that it didn’t hide anything. I didn’t play on the smaller display in handheld mode, but on the classic big screen. And at first glance, the graphics actually looked quite nice. But despite that, I still can’t quite shake the worry that the Switch’s aging hardware will limit the game after so long. It will simply be harder to resist that impression than if the sequel came out, say, two or three years after Breath of the Wild.

What I am sure of, on the other hand, is that thanks to the news in this world, players will experiment even more, they will spend a long time finding original solutions, building new impressive machines and discovering tricks with which they will very likely surprise even the authors themselves. You can’t expect any unequivocal assessment at this place. It would be premature. Because it’s quite obvious that I’ve only scratched the surface of the vast world here, maybe even less. Rather, he touched it briefly. But I can definitely say that I liked what I saw, and that I’m probably looking forward to the full version a bit more now than I was before.