 Before I get into this video, I just want to remind you that we have a kickoff giveaway for Prime Gaming Fest featuring a Hylian Shield replica, two Zelda Switch OLEDs, and two Zelda Collector's Edition, so five total winners. All you have to do is head down to the pinned comment or the description. Click on the link to enter. Prime Gaming Fest begins on June 8th. We'll have more details on this festival soon, but again, you can enter this giveaway right now. We're also on our road to 133,000 subscribers, so I'd appreciate if you would go ahead and hit that subscribe button, drop a like on this video, and let me know your favorite moment in Tears of the Kingdom so far down in the comments below. Now guys, I've been playing a lot of Tears of the Kingdom, right? Let's just not beat around the bush. Some of you guys are going to be much further than me. Some of you guys aren't. I didn't get to play at all yesterday, as an example, had a lot of family obligations, but here's the thing about Tears of the Kingdom that I want to talk about. I'm going to give some impressions here, because I realized we have a podcast coming up tomorrow at Noon Central featuring Kit and Krista from the Kit and Krista show and former Nintendo employees. We got Monster Maze coming on. We got Commonwealth Realm coming on. I started to realize with the amount of people Andres restart that we have coming on to talk about Zelda that I might not really get to talk that much. I'm going to kind of play host and keep in the conversation, moving and passing it around. So instead, I wanted to make a separate impressions video on this game. And this is not my review, because I don't feel like you should review a game if you haven't beaten it. And I haven't beaten this game. But there's one big impression I have. And I got to give RGT-85 some credit on this, because he brought it up. And it's something I've already been thinking. And it's something that he kind of labels are a problem, but a good problem. I look at it more as this is just something I've never seen. And I played a lot of open world games, right? I played The Witcher 3 to completion, including its DLC. I played, so far, I played a little bit of Elden Ring. I admit that's the one that I don't have the hours in yet. But I did play some Elden Ring. I played a ton of other open world games, open world MMO games like World of Warcraft and stuff like that. But what's really fun about this game is the sheer amount of stuff there is to do. People call this $70 DLC. I really didn't buy that it would be $70 DLC. They spent way too much time making this. I understood the concerns about being in the same world. But it really feels like every two minutes in this game, there is something new to do. And it's insane. Like, it distracts you from things. Like, the whole reason I haven't, quote, unquote, beaten the game and done all the dungeons and all this stuff is because I keep getting sidetracked. And I keep getting sidetracked with quests and with things in the world that are so much more in depth than Breath of the Wild ever was. Most of Breath of the Wild's quests were basically fetch quests, right? That's what a majority of those side quests were. Fetch me these materials. Thank you. Fetch me these materials. Thank you. And sure, there are a few fetch quests in this game so far that I have encountered. But to a much, let's just say they don't really bother me as much because of the variety in the quest, right? Like, there were so many of those in Breath of the Wild. Oh, go to this cave, beat this enemy, bring me back this thing. There is a lot. I'll give you just a few examples. I don't want to get too spoiler-y here. But Nintendo showed this out themselves so I could talk about it. You have your monster hunters out there, right? You have your, I forget exactly what they call the crew that runs out of the Pura camp. But there's this crew out there that's trying to clear out monsters from certain sectors of the world. And this is a part where you get to actually fight alongside fellow Hylians, be it, you know, NPCs or like basic citizens that are wearing buckets on their heads and fighting with mops to all out, you know, former knights and all of that of Hyrule. So it's really cool that you could tackle these things in multiple ways. But one of those ways is to tackle it with them and have them fight alongside you. And that is such a unique little side mission that's absolutely not required to do in any sense. It's a side quest, but you get to experience this multiple times throughout the game and it's not thrown at you so often that it ever feels old and every situation you find this quest in offers a unique thing, right? A unique ability. Now, there are other things as well, obviously, like the shrines, right? We all know the shrines. Some of those, some people out there are kind of like, oh, shrines, pain, pain. What a pain. And I hear you there, right? I hear the pain comments about shrines. But what's interesting is because we're using all new mechanics, the shrines don't actually feel that bad to me. Now, some of the shrines I've encountered are extremely long, significantly longer than any shrine I encountered in Breath of the Wild. But other shrines are still on the shorter variety, but offer really clever puzzles that your mind has to work differently to solve. And because of the new way in which we have to solve puzzles, which a majority of them deal with Masterhand, it's become to me quite brilliant in how Nintendo designed this game. So for me personally, I'm just super stoked about this whole concept in general of the shrines. I thought I would be bored with them. You know, at one point I got bored with them in Breath of the Wild, my first playthrough. And I'm not finding that happening here because Nintendo created some really clever shrines that you can obviously, you know, figure out in multiple different ways. And I'm actually having a pretty good time with the shrine, surprisingly. But that's just one little side thing, right? Sometimes you'll encounter somebody who's in a hole or something like this and you need to figure out how to get them or get them in their wagon or them and whatever items out of that hole with your limited building materials around. Of course, you could drop some of your own materials, your own doughnut devices, but it's really fun and clever and interesting when these things come up because they sort of make sense. They're not things that like, oh, this person shouldn't be here. It was put here just for me to do something. Even like listening to their story and how they got into the hole, it all makes sense. It's super fleshed out. You have escort missions. You have a cash. I mean, there's the Korok seeds right now. I'm going to admit right now I'm not the biggest fan of the Korok seed quest in general, existing. Give me an example. You know, they use this one a lot. This is one that's become very repetitive where you have a Korok with a backpack who's trying to get to his friend. And this is a very popular Korok seed quest. There's a ton of these all throughout Hyrule. And like, I didn't mind it at first, but after a while, it does get old, having it repeated so much. I was hoping there'd be more variety and there is in some cases like up on the Great Sky Island. You might have encountered this one where there is a flower, but this isn't like your normal white flower that you would chase around in Breath of the Wild. Instead, it's one of those floating flowers. You hit it and it floats in the air. And I couldn't figure out what you're supposed to do. I supposed to shoot it with an arrow or, you know, just have it land in a certain location. And it turns out, you're supposed to chase after and catch it before it hits the ground and that's the Korok seed. And I find those Korok seed ones to be interesting. Like the new Korok seed puzzles, the first time you encounter them, including the backpack one is quite fun. It's just then after a while, you start to realize, oh, they've only added X amount of new ways Korok seeds work plus they have some of the old ways and it gets a little old. So, this is another thing, like I never really would 100% of the Koroks in Breath of the Wild and I don't think I'm gonna do that here, but it's still something to do, which kind of gets deeper and deeper into some of the other side quests. You'll randomly have someone like, oh, I dropped something down in the malice hole. There's a whole side mission going on with that down in the depths. And the depths itself has all this stuff going on. The enemy variety, like I'm finding, okay. So because this game uses fuse, right? And there isn't really elemental arrows or at least elemental weapons. I haven't found elemental arrows or weapons in this game. What I found are fused elemental arrows and weapons, which are really awesome. But because of this, you're constantly needing to gather materials all the time. Like you can't just skip by things. In fact, one of my scarcest resources in this game is money. I've only purchased a few things from a shop because I look like, well, I own kind of shop. Oh, here's some clothes. All the clothes is 500 rupees. I'm 20 plus hours in and I've only got 500 rupees because the only rupees I'm getting are from quests because I'm not selling anything because everything is useful. Maybe I can start selling to someone like the Bokeland teeth or something, but those are worth so little money that I'm not really gonna make much from it. The things that are actually worth money, let's say gems as an example. Gems are some of your best fuses, like fusing those through your weapons, fusing those through your bow. Like there's some of your best fuses. Why would you sell them? Like if you've got like 20, 30 of the rubies, you are like a God in this game and you don't wanna get rid of those. So I find it really fascinating how hard I mean, maybe there's a quest or a mini game somewhere because you guys remember Breath of the Wild, you can do like the snowball mini game and that was one way to make, once you get good at that mini game of course, to just make a ton of rupees. I haven't found a mini game like that in this world yet. Maybe there is one and I wouldn't be surprised if there was. Look, I'm not even getting into the story beats here because we're gonna keep this non-spoiler but this game just has so much to do. I'm a little overwhelmed at times at the amount of things there are to do but I'm overwhelmed in a good way because every time I boot up this game, I know I'll not be bored because there's always something to do and I didn't necessarily feel that way in Breath of the Wild. There was significantly less side quests in Breath of the Wild, significantly less things going on in the overall. I mean, even this guy who's running around trying to set up signs to advertise Hudson, I don't even know if he works for Hudson. I don't know if he's just trying to impress Hudson. I don't know what the hell's going on the whole president thing you think you have a grip on how to help him set up his signs and how to hold it up so he can lock it in place and then all of a sudden you'll meet one where the landscape is just slightly different so not different enough that you think it's a big deal and the whole way you've been holding up the signs doesn't work and next thing you know you're building this absolute monstrosity just to hold a sign up so he can nail it into the ground. It's so weird but it's fun. It's engaging, it's different. There isn't anything I truly dislike about this game so far. Like I've been trying to find flaws and besides the Korok seeds getting a little bit too repetitive which I mean, come on, the Korok seeds weren't that great in the first game if we're being completely honest I wish they would have found it a different way because there's so much in this game. In Breath of the Wild I felt like the Korok seeds existed because there wasn't as much going on in the world so you needed Korok seeds to add some sort of reward for getting to the tallest peak or getting inside this cave or doing this thing. Having a Korok seed there at least gave you a sense of okay, this wasn't entirely pointless to explore and visit this area but here's the thing, there's so much going on in this game and every nook and cranny and cave and all over the place that the Korok seeds aren't really needed. The Korok seeds aren't really needed in my opinion to help fill out content in this world I wish they would have done, they wanted to do some Korok seed quest, fine. Maybe have it where each Korok seed quest would have been a upgrade to your inventory. I would have been cool with that. Instead they've gone with a ton of, I have no idea how many Korok seeds there are. I wouldn't be surprised if there were like 2,000 in this game. There's so many damn Korok seeds. And then the way they handle the transition from the sky to Hyrule to the underworld it's all seamless, it's all just crazy and the underworld is like so deep down. Like it is way down there. The fact that the entirety of Hyrule basically has this, you know, chasm underneath all of it. It's just, this game guys, it makes Breath of the Wild look like a toy. That's maybe the biggest compliment I can give the tears of the kingdom is it makes Breath of the Wild look like a toy and also fixes a lot of the complaints in Breath of the Wild. Not all of it, but a lot. And we need to get used to this style of game because, well, according to Heiji Onuma, he said in an interview that Breath of the Wild was sort of their new template for games going forward in the way that Ocarina of Time was back in 1998. We're gonna get a lot more games like this. I don't know if it's gonna necessarily be this exact same art style, the same climbing mechanics and animations and all that. Maybe not, but it's going to be open world. They're not going away from open world Zelda anytime soon and I don't blame them. You know why I don't blame them? Look at the damn sales. Tears of the Kingdom is setting records right now. Breath of the Wild set a record for a Zelda game and there's no logical reason for them to go away from this other than the small minority of people whining and complaining and wanting to go back to a more linear game that's just jam-packed with nine, 10, 12 dungeons and have those dungeons be in a certain way. Could some of those dungeon elements come back in the future? Sure, but you combine the shrines with the dungeons in this game and I gotta say I'm pretty satisfied. You know, they fix a lot of things. Do we have unique boss fights in the dungeon? Yes, we have extremely unique boss fights. Do we have a lot more enemy variety in this game? Yes, the level of enemy variety. I haven't even touched on that. There's so many different enemies. Like, I am blown away. They're the variety. Like, guys, I don't know what Tears of the Kingdom is a perfect game. I do have some minor gripes, you know? Things like, I wish there were more enemies in the dungeons, right? But I will say that I am very impressed by what I have seen. I'm very impressed by what I've encountered. I'm very impressed by how much there is to do. Obviously, a more stable frame rate in some situations would be welcome, but I can almost overlook all that because I just, I got something else to worry about, man. Oh, the frame rate's chugging. I don't care, I still gotta get over to the spot over here and do this thing. I gotta collect some spirits over here. I'm not gonna say what they are because I don't wanna spoil people, but oh my gosh, guys, this is the game that, I mean, this is worth the wait. Six years, didn't know how this game was gonna deliver. It's delivered in spades. This may be for me, the perfect video game. And I don't mean perfect in every way. Again, I have criticisms, but those criticisms seem so small compared to everything going on. Everything seems to matter. The storytelling seems to matter. Again, don't wanna spoil anything, but it seems to really matter. The NPCs are not just blank slates. They all have personalities and lives and things going on. I'm just, guys, am I ever gonna stop playing this game? At this point, I don't know, probably someday, but I'm gonna be playing it for years because I don't know how it's possible to discover everything in this game, but sure be it, I will do it someday. Damn, I'm gonna put more hours in this and animal crossing new horizons. Man, anyways, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. Let me know your thoughts on Tuesday the game down below and I'll catch you in the next video.