 Before I get into this video, I want to remind you that we're giving away a Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Switch OLED, we're also giving away a Tears of the Kingdom Collector's Edition and a pin from PAX East. Enter head down to the link in the pinned comment or the description. We're also on our road to 133,000 subscribers so I would appreciate if you would subscribe to the channel because hey, Nintendo's 133 years old. Alright guys, the reviews are in and more and more of them are going to be dropping throughout the day. But it's time to get into some stuff and I'm going to warn that for some people you're going to consider some of the stuff we're going to talk about as spoilers even though everything they talk about in these reviews was allowed by Nintendo and there were very, very, very specific things not allowed by Nintendo. As an example, pretty much none of the reviews can really go into the story details. But if you don't care about that, damn, is there a lot of stuff to get into. At the time of recording this game keeps bouncing back and forth between a 96 and a 97 on Metacritic. That does mean it probably won't end up being percentage points ahead of Tears of the Kingdom even if it settles in at a 97 since it seems to be at the lower end of that 97 or the higher end of a 96. But we'll have to wait and see because as I said, it keeps bouncing back and forth. I've got I literally on screen right now I got a 97 and a 96 as we go it just keeps updating. So that if you just want to know the review scores, there you go. It's bouncing between a 96 and a 97 overall on Metacritic and Open Critic. So that's already extremely impressive that it's almost matching what Breath of the Wild did back in 2017 and maybe we'll match it when all of the reviews are taken in. That being said, let's get into a couple of categories. I split this up by the great and the bad. I didn't really do a okay because the okay aspects of the game kept changing review to review because it's going to be based a lot on personal taste. Now before I even get into this stuff, I do want to just also remind you reviews are subjective. There's no such thing as an objective review. They are subjective. They are about personal likes and desires. As an example, the worst review out there was a 6 out of 10. I'm not going to name the outlet because we don't need to go flame them. But basically they didn't like Breath of the Wild and so they don't like Tears of the Kingdom and it's really interesting that it got a 6 out of 10 from them when you already knew what this game was going to be. So having someone review a game they didn't like is weird when they already knew they weren't going to like this game going in because it wasn't for them in the first place. It's a little strange but that is one score that potentially is holding things down. There's a couple 8 out of 10s as well mostly because some outlets do like 4 out of 5s and don't have like 4.5s or 4.7s, right? So if they don't think it's a perfect game and they give it a 4, it could really hurt it in a way that maybe it shouldn't. That being said, let's dive into the great because you guys want to know the good stuff first. So here are what pretty much every review I read agreed upon except that 6 out of 10 review that doesn't like Breath of the Wild anyways. Alright so it improves upon Breath of the Wild in almost every possible facet. Now the story while reviews weren't allowed to talk about it is considered to be a massive high point for the series in most of the reviews. Most. We'll get to the bad of the story later but most of the reviews really really enjoyed the story. On the other hand and the other new abilities are basically genius and a lot of fun and thanks to how the game is designed if any one ability isn't your cup of tea there are numerous ways should you choose to tackle things making this an adventure of your own imagination. Now there are three entirely separate maps including an underground that is the literal size of Hyrule itself. It's enthralling, expansive and there always seems to be something new around every corner. One huge step up many reviews noted were the puzzles be them in the open world the dungeons or shrines the puzzles are a massive step up from Breath of the Wild reminding many of the reviewers why nobody else can really make puzzle based obstacles that are as memorable as the Zelda team has consistently from game to game. The physics remain just as impressive in 2023 as they did in 2017 but for many of the reviewers even more so given the new ways they can be manipulated. The enemy AI in general is considered much better than Breath of the Wild and making for a more challenging experience they also all agree that the enemy variety is so much better in this game but there probably won't be any complaints about that this time around. All the quality of life improvements are extremely appreciative there's pretty much nothing negative said about that Nintendo improved everything that most reviewers felt they needed to improve. Most reviewers at one point or another note how tears of the kingdom truly made Breath of the Wild feel like a rough draft or possibly even a tech demo compared to this game and they all say how impressive that is as most still consider Breath of the Wild one of the greatest games ever made. The dungeons are indeed a positive step forward from Breath of the Wild. You have long winding quest chains that cause the dungeons to even appear and while they have four to five doors to unlock sequences similar to the Divine Beast it's actually more fun this time because the new mechanics give a much wider variety of how to solve the inherent puzzles whereas the Divine Beast were basically all solved in the same manner. While most of the reviews do not go in-depth on boss fights likely because of embargo restrictions the overall conclusion is that the fights are worth the payoff be it overworld mini bosses, bosses in the underworld or sky or bosses faced at the end of dungeons. Nintendo is back to making some of the most unique, interesting and engaging boss fights the Zelda series has been known for. Hell yeah that's all I can really say to that. Alright Shrines are back of course many of you guys already know this but they are back or speculated they were back but they are also significantly more fun this time around. They essentially took what worked, threw out what didn't and then just cranked it to 11 so I'm really looking forward to the Shrines. Nobody experienced even a single bug while playing. Of course fans are going to uncover all sorts of glitches if they seek them out which of course many fans do but many noted that it's sad to say that this is an impressive feature because in the world of AAA games where games were released broken only to be fixed later or in a world where so many games over promise and under deliver cut features for microtransactions tears of the kingdom is not only bug free as far as every reviewer can tell it actually over delivers on the promises made before launch which that's what you want to hear guys this is why this is the lead contender at the moment for game of the year. I mean very clearly the lead contender the highest reviewed game of the year because hey they did it right and so many other games don't do it now that doesn't mean there aren't critiques because of course there are members is all subjectives now the bad is that most reviews note that the performance isn't always perfect so it's not like a rock solid 30 FPS all the time digital foundry they're the ones that do the deepest tech analysis and their review they noted that it got better after a patch release that were intended for review outlets which we all know that patch released I think earlier this week or at the end of last week anyways but basically any time that you use master hand which is a lot there are dips and if you try you can make those dips pretty bad but most of the base gameplay outside of those moments is a rock solid 30 still because of the frequency of the use of that ability master hand even with FSR enabled you can notice the chugs and yes digital foundry confirmed that patch that came out did indeed add FSR it was not there in the review copies before that patch so people thought they were patching people's like physical copies and yes that is true that it does patch that but the digital copies that reviewers had originally didn't have the update in it so the reason that update came out was specifically for reviews clearly and it did that that patch did improve performance because the game actually was chugging before that patch in way more than just master hand situations afterwards it seemed to only chug while using master hand which is an improvement so moving on oh by the way FSR didn't view improve the visual quality as well I watched the entire digital foundry review it did improve the visual quality and seems to be one of the few titles they note the FSR 1.0 which is not considered to be very good is actually worth it so they do think overall FSR 1.0 tears of the kingdoms one of the few games that proves hey there is specific use cases where FSR 1.0 has advantages alright now more bad on a slightly negative and a little bit positive note for some the general takeaway on the performance is that they more than double the size of the world increasing draw distance and shadow quality slightly while keeping things seamless and still the performance isn't any worse than Breath of the Wild which digital foundry said for switch is a technical achievement in that of itself but again for people that wanted that rock solid 30 all the time that is a notable thing and performance was a consistent thing brought up by many review outlets I don't know how many review outlets played much of the game after the patch came out you know we have no idea to know how each review all that handled their reviews alright some of the reviews were kind of so so on the story they pretty much all say it's still better than Breath of the Wild but not but not everyone agreed that the story was good again we noted that the story was a positive and some of the reviews absolutely there are many review outlets that thought it's one of the best stories in Zelda history there are other review outlets that were like didn't really hit for me so I just wanted to put this in both categories because it does seem like the story and this time around like in Breath of the Wild it's generally considered most people don't find that story to be pretty good I'm on the outlier of thinking that it is really good but most people generally agree the story isn't great in this game it seems to be a bit more divisive and I wonder if it's a lot of it's a bit more divisive because of Zelda like purists that know all the lore might be really into it but other people that aren't might not because it sounds like and this was one review noted specifically that there's a lot of references to like prior battles and wars and how things all played out and Zelda and Link's role in that stuff we already know from thanks to Aonuma that one of those wars that gets brought up is the imprisoning war and I feel like a lot of these lore aspects referencing to prior games is really going to hit with massive Zelda enthusiasts but the wider audience Breath of the Wild reached these references may not hit with them as well because they're not aware of those events so I do think that that might be where some of the disconnect is but I don't know for sure because I haven't played the damn game right now um it's beyond that some felt that while the dungeons were better than Breath of the Wild they wanted them to be something else for better or worse and this this seemed to be a comment that came from some of the same reviews that massively praise the story this is why I think it might have been some Zelda purist because those that massively praise the story were probably mega Zelda fans and those mega Zelda fans have been wanting the dungeons to go back to like Twilight Princess style dungeons and that clearly was never going to happen because I don't know that those style dungeons really fit into what this game does but uh while they do still say the dungeons are better though so that's something and thanks to Aonuma we know the dungeons are themed so they're going to be different the boss fights are going to be vastly different between them etc so I'm really excited in general for this so that basically is the gist of what I got out of the reviews of course I always encourage you to go check out your favorite review outlets your favorite youtube reviewer etc etc etc you guys get all the extra information you need clearly we were using footage from various reviews that were sourced throughout this this thing because hey now we got a bunch of new footage so why wouldn't we I'm not going to go into deep diving detail of all the footage because guys the game launches in Australia like maybe even before this video gets out so it's already technically going to be a public release and it releases you know tonight and guys there's no real point for me to dive into all the individual details in the footage at this point but here you guys go we got another video coming later over some interview content as well and who the hell knows what else is going to happen today but all I got to say is in conclusion for me these reviews were exactly what I thought they would be it's bouncing between 96 and a 97 on Metacritic and hopefully for my my sanity that it locks in at 97 because I think this game deserves to be right up there next to Breath of the Wild all right guys I'll catch you in the next video