 You think playing Tears of the Kingdom was overwhelming? I never even reviewed Breath of the Wild, so... What's done from scratch here? Nintendo as a company are creative, innovative, and not bound to many of the restrictions that other game studios have to face these days. Name me one other company that's allowed to have endless decades of development time on single projects while also allowing their main bad guy to be in charge. You don't see Square-Enix taking orders from Daddy Sorry, although... Um, did you not just see me take out that gnarly beast? Maybe they should. Breath of the Wild had five years to cook. And as a result of Nintendo pouring their hearts into the development time, gamers get this delicious, creamy heart soup of an experience that gamers just get to... I don't know what I'm doing and just savor every single last drop of and they've done that since release and they'll continue to do that for years into the future. To summarize what could easily be, I don't know, let's just take a guess, 3 hour 20 minute and 42 second YouTube review, Breath of the Wild was if not one of the greatest video game ever made and absolutely my favorite. Almost everybody could agree it was the best game ever made and there was no beating it. Almost everybody could agree. There was one guy that disagreed. Tears Out That Kingdom also had a five year development time but using Breath of the Wild as its base it was able to build upon it and improve upon every element in every single conceivable way. Tears of the Kingdom, more like tears of the kingdom. The land of Hyrule, the sky above, and the caverns below. You're an idiot. You're an idiot. You're an idiot. You're an idiot. I'm an idiot. You're an idiot. You're an idiot. I've always wanted to do that. Each offering dynamic exploration creativity and I swear to God this is the last distraction before I save Hyrule it's just that I gotta help this Korra kid get to his friend on the other side of this river and then build a needlessly over complicated structure for him and then that is it. I'll get back on track after I check out that cave over there because I really need more of those frog gems for the weird guy to snack on and a bunch more of the bright gems for the diamond poopers. That make sense to anyone else? You're an idiot. You're an idiot. When Nintendo created Breath of the Wild they wanted players to experience a sense of freedom. They could go anywhere they wanted right from the start. There was no wrong direction. There was no wrong way to play. You could take a stick straight to Ganon's front door and fight him with the power of God and anime on your side and no one was going to stop you. There was no need for experience points or leveling up. The entire world was your playground to level up any way you wanted. If something's too hard forget about it screw that guy go do something else and come back later when you're stronger or more skilled or after you can't fight a glitch the master sword because you saw a YouTube guy do it once. Nintendo didn't just add an open world to Zelda. It defined what an open world could be unlike other game franchises that just slap in an open world and hope for the best. It's like Domino's adding wings to their menu. I mean you guys can barely make up pizza. But then on the other hand Wingstop got them garlic palms. Tears of the Kingdom will never tell you that you can't do something. Rather it will always encourage you to try and then allow it to happen. No matter how insane it seems. In so many ways Breath of the Wild influenced so many great games to come. Elden Ring being one of them and it's also regarded as one of the best games ever made by myself included and its version of an open world echoes that of Breath of the Wild. And with Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo wanted to take that open world of Zelda and double it. But sadly they failed. They tripled it my guy. Leading up to launch promotional material told us that we were heading up into the sky with new floating platforms appearing over Hyrule. This was exciting and helped quell some fears that this game might just be 70 dollars of DLC. However, Nintendo are Pokemon masters at waving one hand over here but then doing something sneaky down here under the table. Because while we all thought they were playing a blue-wise white dragon which is still pretty cool they were actually assembling a freaking whole exodius right under a nozadus. The depths below doubling the size of Hyrule with the map being a one for one scale with the land above. I can't tell you, I can't explain to you what it feels like that first time you plummet into the depths, into the darkness below. The pitch black emptiness filled with unknown horrors, secrets and booty cheeks that you can dive into by the way. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't, I don't, I don't know. I didn't try it. I saw it online. I wasn't looking. Tears has three main layers with seamless transitioning between them. It's absolutely breathtaking and pushes this 6 year old dusty console to its limits. The ability to not fall down to the depths of a cave, well actually that's what I'm about to say. The ability to stand at the highest point of the game and 10 point perfect dive all the way down to the lowest stanky depths with seamless transitioning is not only just super fun to do but also showcases the absolute limitless freedom you have to explore this version of Hyrule any way you want. Speaking of diving headfirst into the unknown, I think I did just that. I'm a little ahead of myself. There's a lot to talk about before we get here. So let's back it up. Tears of the Kingdom begins in the depths. Oh, we're back here again. I guess we didn't back it up very far. Immediately starting you underneath Hyrule Castle with Link and Zelda searching for this mysterious gloom that's been spilling on out and giving people serious case of Ganon 19. We learn so much about the entire story in just the first few moments but we don't understand the depth to it all yet pun intended that idea of the soundtrack in Breath of the Wild being more abstract sounds and noises and Miyamoto flicking his cheek and making that wet drip sound you know that kind of stuff to highlight that sporadic and free flowing expiration is once again improved upon here this early part of the game featuring these slow and twisted stretched synth wade chords playing at such an uneasy pace implying that something might happen but you're not sure you don't know but you can fully at ease yourself just in case something does happen I'm scared daddy sorry as you begin that final descent towards pure evil the music begins to grow as they add more and more layers of synth and then they introduce these someratic piano keys that start building and building and overwhelming the space until silence what is that even though it's short lived these moments of walking around with Zelda they're not only awesome as a fan but they're also so important for the storytelling link is zelda's appointed protector it's literally his one job and it's our job too in these early moments of the game we take on this responsibility and ultimately fail as Link struggles to reach out for her and then barely manages to even survive himself and then this mummy just crushes link breaking him down to his weakest state destroying the master sword and his right arm in the process but I mean jokes on the mummy I guess links left handed so that wouldn't even faze him what's that oh no yeah all of this acts as a way of resetting the player's progression sure I'll give you that so that a new game can be played but it's all done in such a way that adds weight to the story the game doesn't just take the master sword away and say dog man well wouldn't you know link got all hopped up on mumu milk and forgot where he put the darn thing yeah rather it showcases how weak and fragile the master sword was against this thing link at his strongest couldn't be this guy at his weakest that's why they showed you his heart study had him this is the most complete version of link and you may as well throw a T in front of that because compared to this guy he's a twerk maybe if this link had this link's delts what was twilight princess link pension the story he in tears of the kingdom is not only the best we've seen in a zelda game but also the saddest I mean tears of the kingdom more like tears of the kingdom tears of the kingdom follows almost exactly the same story beats as breath of the wild but again does them all better you know hit up a few shrines collect your powers to send the Hyrule below visit the four regions make new besties beat the big baddie and then head to the Winchester grab a pipe wait for this whole thing to blow over yeah except not that quickly because every element is far more ambitious it really does feel like tears of the kingdom is the breath of the wild the developers wanted to make but they were held back by the pu also you know time I know it had five years of development but really it feels like it had 10 years of total development man I gotta say if this is what Nintendo can do with that decade of development time then Metroid Prime 4 has to be looking insane you guys are still making that right right all right let's talk about the abilities this time around link gets splat schwoop sticky and if we could turn back time each of these abilities give link God like powers no I'm not kidding it turns you into actual Jesus Christ always look on the light side of line oh I'm serious even ascend it wasn't actually originally a planned ability for the game it was a developer debug tool they used while building tears of the kingdom they used it to leave caves quickly and it was a cheat that they would use while making the game and they decided why not just give that to the player because cheating is fun in video games big distinction and that was the inspiration that led to how the rest of the game could be played so just shade it don't matter who cares nobody cares nice hat every puzzle every shrine you won't get caught nobody's looking Nintendo wants you to do it they're begging you cheat on us they say well don't like go to PlayStation or Xbox you know stay here on Nintendo but as as long as you're here adultery baby as long as you get to the end goal the game will always give you that satisfying Zelda fanfare sound which means you did it right no matter how you did it we don't want to know how you did it don't tell us but you did it there is no wrong way to play tears of the kingdom because cheating is fun it always has been and I think this is a sign that it is high time that we have to go back to the days of when cheating was not only allowed in video games but was encouraged whether we're talking about literal cheat codes on my old windows 95 cheese yellow pc build where I used to put big daddy into my age of empires to get our friggin car with rocket launchers which is funny now that I'm looking at this because it's so similar to what I'm actually doing in front of the wild or like in the Sims where I would type in mother look and I would make all the money so quickly which people are also doing in Zelda but I would do that and then I would build the best house by dream house and then I would make all my sims shower and then delete the shower don't judge me I was like 12 or not even literal cheat codes what about when you outsmart the game like it never feels better than when you're playing mario kart and you take a jump off rainbow road where you're not supposed to but you stick the landing anyway and find that shortcut to get you in first place or or there was I used to when I was a kid I loved playing the star wars phantom menace game but I think I was like nine and some of the levels were really hard there was one platforming part in gungan city I could never do so I found this really great hack where I would just cry and my dad would do it my point is cheating in games is fun nintendo has even given us these tools before in their games you remember mario three hit blow my freaking brain that first time I found the flute I found it on my own on accident and it lets you skip whole levels and I was like this has been it all time I've been going through all the levels like a idiot like a pleb and this guy knew about it the first time he ever played the game huh also the first time the game was ever revealed I cool cat there's uh there's there's a certain level of hubris that I think a developer needs to let go of when they design a game like this every little section in breath of the wild has puzzles to solve and they kind of leave around tools for you to do them and any other video game you would have to use those tools those are the tools you were given do the puzzle you piss and but not in this game baby like it take this one part of the it's like though in the wind temple no spoilers in the wind temple there's this thing it's got a spin around and it'll open that gate now here's what I did here's what my big brain did I got a stone slab I stuck it on there and then I had a I had a fan in my inventory that I had brought from like earlier in the game not even this temple I just stuck it on there turn it on spun it around bombs your uncle I hope not that be really weird but it worked and that's not really even the right way of doing it I could have just used talent to do his wind gusts and that would have done it too but I've seen people just spin it around manually and then use recall to make it do it on its own and then that works too it doesn't matter which way you solve it and you want to know why it doesn't matter because of this it's a long time zelda fan or a fan of any video game series we all grew up with these fanfare sounds in our games you know whether it's Final Fantasy Pokemon uh good heckin Kirby Bobsy 3d these sounds growing up were like a nurturing parent that was telling us we did a good job you know giving us a a delicious fresh baked chocolate chip cookie every time we did the right thing that we were supposed to do these sounds raised us and embedded in our frontal lobes this sensation that we were doing the right thing it's funny now getting that sound in zelda because when we used to get it it was it was always for doing the right thing for solving the puzzle in the way the developers intended but now getting it all these years later it's like that same nurturing parent being there and congratulating us on our successes but at the same time allowing us to spread our wings and do it our way sometimes make our own mistakes but eventually we get there and they're proud of us this sound reinforces that whatever we did to get here there was the right thing to do because at least we're here so again it's that hubris of the developer that needs to take a backseat entire puzzles and areas of this game might be completely skipped by most players finding a way to cheat their way through and other games would yell at you and get mad and they would be like no your mother slaved over that plant casserole for like five years you're gonna eat it and sit down shut up stuff it in nintendo is like nah i'll just throw it out you don't want it why would you eat it you know we'll go to wing stop later get some garlic palms well nintendo is like the cool dad the abilities i swept i almost always there to just help you cheat recall can just reverse the flow of time on anything always and you can use it to your advantage in so many countless ways and not just when you accidentally drop something off a cliff and want to look at it to bring it back even though do you have you seen the draw distance on this you can drop things from the sky essentially down to the ground and still pinpoint get it back it's it's it crazy ultra hand is magnetis magnetis sorry diabetes if the entire world was metal i like the the element but it has an added bonus where you can just look group everything together like everything in the world you can just super glue and i mean anything like i have a pen i have an apple uh apple pen i'm 150 hours into this game and i still have just as much fun crazy glue sticking things together as i did the very first time i just two platforms together once you add in all the zonai devices and there's so many we'll talk about them later found around the world and then getcha gotcha a bold giant gumball machines and these are crazy by the way they're so satisfying to throw like five massives on i charges into and then watch everything spill out and it's so satisfying it even breaks the frame which is weirdly not even by design one of the most oddly satisfying things in the game to know that i got so much stuff the game is breaking i mean you can build bridges boats cars scaffolding pod races and freaking hell in a cell death cages gun dams more like gun damn it is up to you how crazy or not crazy you get with the building i mean you don't have to do it at all you know some players don't but then other people build 16 wheelers and just hit the open road and again this was nintendo listening and watching and and and feeding off of their players some people built entire careers off of the back of breath of the wild whether it was you know trying to cheat their way through the game or building a wacky flying platforms out of the very limited resources that they had available to them nintendo saw people not only enjoying their game for what it was but enjoying their game for what it could be so you know what they did they said uh hey you want to build things in zelda well now you can you want to glitch your way through the game to the end well here's a tool that we used to do that and they they said hey you want your weapons to stop breaking well well we can't do that but we will give you fuse which extends the life of the weapons at least also it makes them crazy strong and you confuse anything with anything you don't believe me watch this video about it i have a pair i have a pair speaking of the fuse ability i fully believe that had to have added at least a year to the total development time anything being able to be fused to your sword shield or bow and each having different abilities and effects that all work cohesively together i mean this is even crazier levels than super smash brothers ultimate and how every character have these crazy movesets and they all somehow work together and they don't break the game the start of my playthrough i'll admit it was a lot of just fusing pointy long stick to other pointy long stick to make extra long extra pointy stick which to be fair might have just been me overcompensating later i realized that yeah you know what that really cool loot that enemies drop when they die oh you confuse that to your weapons and more often than not it'll make a really cool new sick thing like when i got this levi look the sword the lizard enemy i can never pronounce his name when you kill him and you get his like horn it turns your you don't go spear and they're like a scythe ha i mean it's even more cool because i i literally took this thing's life with my bare hands i ripped it its head it stuck it onto my it's so cool and i'll use it for the next two fights before it breaks thank you for your worthy sacrifice you creature it'll be fine i'll be back next mine carts on shields to rail grind what is this jet set radio bombs on shields to get insane height ravali's gale through you can keep your gale revile you can put team rockets on shields if you want to be blasting off again if you put a gem on a shield it'll make elemental explosions death ray beam there's probably so many more things i don't there's definitely so many more things i don't know about and and that players will be discovering for forever to come and that's before we even get to arrows you stick a you stick a an eyeball on an arrow it'll heat seek a homing missile onto enemies lemons can shock your enemies you can put muddle bud things on your and then you hit and then the enemy will get all confused and will attack other enemies for you you can even fuse a steak to an arrow and make a meat missile and i it doesn't really do anything except slap your enemies in the face with protein but i mean it's i mean it's humiliating no one wants to get pistol whip with another man's meat missile you'll be fusing so many things to arrows you'll constantly be scourging around enemy camps and breaking crates and looking behind the couch under the fridge with just one more arrow i swear arrows have become the rarest and most valuable commodity in this game it's like the only thing i'll spend money on just give me another freaking arrow man please i'm joneson hundreds of different kinds of items from enemy drops to just things you find around the world it just creates endless possibilities for your play style and how you interact with the world and it also gives items so much more value i mean before like enemy parts would just trade bait for me you know i wasn't going to cook in with them and all i would really do is sell them for money or i guess give them to kilton so that i could get this freaking sick armor set then why can't you upgrade this nintendo but now with items having a certain amount of damage attributed to it that makes them super useful in combat too it also gives me so much more reason to want to fight enemies or hunt down certain types because i want to rip out their eyeballs and then rip cages because link is a savage now and daddy needs his balls the bigger and stronger the enemies the better the drop materials so the liners they're not just a fun exciting fight anymore they're also serious weapon buffers there's nothing more barbaric than then killing an enemy and getting his heart still beating hard and attaching it to a club and and then finding another enemy and beating him with it and yes beat that was a heart joke like beating eat your heart out that was another one but then that's not even all of it because you get the final ability yeah there's a fifth ability i know that's the kind of the first real spoiler in the video there's going to be spoilers the game's been out for like a month get over it i'm sorry there's going to be some and this is one the auto build i grossly underestimated how useful auto build was going to be and i underutilized it for most of my playthrough too because at first i was like oh cool this is awesome so now i can like build something and it saves in a log and then i can rebuild it whenever i want as long as i have the materials on hand it will just it will just stick it all together for me that's really handy because if i don't have a spare 45 minutes to build a 16 wheeler but i start getting that itch to go trucking what am i gonna do so yeah i thought it was handy handy you idiot i said to myself a hundred hours later it's not just handy it's really handy because you don't you don't have to have the stuff you don't have to have the stuff i thought you had to have the stuff you don't you can pay in zonite to fabricate it at a thin air like a 3d printer if you ever get stuck in a cave because the ceiling's too high you build your instant scaffolding out of nothing your climate and then you ascend out boom bam thank you ma'am and that's only just one way i can think right now of cheating in this game there's so many ways to cheat i'm surprised the game's not endorsed by tiger once i it don't get me wrong i loved the abilities and breath of the water oh look at him i love him oh cute i'd send him a valentine's day card for sure but they're nothing compared to the abilities and tears of the kingdom it's like the freezing water koreanus whatever christ christ that one it froze water great cool but you couldn't magnesis it or like interact with it in any way you couldn't freeze time on it like why would you it doesn't make any sense but in this game you can like ultra hand up something and move it all around and then let go and then recall time on that and it'll follow the path that you moved it around and then while it's doing that you can recall up through it and then jump off of it using it as a moving floating platform you confuse all these abilities to get the pun definitely intended to solve puzzles in all these unique and creative and fun ways whether it's to platform a puzzle defeat enemies or just destroy corok lives i mean look at this i did this one i put a rocket on him there he goes i call it a corocket he's dead now these abilities are so well thought out in their design their application in the world and how they work with each other even their placement on the selection wheel ascend is up ultra hand is on the right because you use links right arm fuse is down because you're typically always looking down at the thing you want to fuse and then mind bogglingly left is recall as in going left as in backwards on a timeline every element of this game is so meticulous well thought out incredibly designed it is a masterpiece overwhelming that's i think the main adjective i have seen used to describe tears of the kingdom by the general public see you it's definitely accurate i for example am overwhelmed right now just finding somewhere to start talking about what you actually do in this game it's kind of a little bit of everything everywhere all at once when revisiting Hyrule Anuba said that they wanted to create something new but also something similar to Breath of the Wild because a lot of things in that game were already exactly how they should be and that the idea of discovering new things in a familiar setting was exciting for them and should excite new players and it does i mean for some players a little bit too much is that a penis from the start of the game everything is new the characters the abilities the items the music the setting i mean everything is yellow now with really only the most basic gameplay elements remaining the same you got the physics the cooking and destroying the ozone layer but to be fair now even those are different because Link haunts these cute little Zelda songs while he cooks and you can make frickin pizza not to mention that now the trees are going down without a fight i loved exploring the first great sky island at the beginning of the game it was such a perfect way of reintroducing the game to both newt and old players once again doing something that nintendo has mastered in teaching the player how to play without actually having to tell them anything because other than roughly pointing you in the right direction occasionally this game doesn't hold your hand at all and yet you just figure it out and if you're wondering the start of the game being so similar to the start of Breath of the Wild did it feel repetitive at all um uh i didn't notice because i was too busy doing this so after you spend a few hours up here in the sky revisiting the temple of time there are so many easter eggs nods direct references to other zelda games in Tears of the Kingdom i lost count and the temple of time has been in a bunch of zelda games but specifically ocarina time my favorite zelda game but more so than that this is what it looked like you know on ocarina it does this it's the same wow it's the it's the same oh that's just there's so many things about your like likes of that you got bomb flowers about gannondorf even looks like ocarina's gannondorf and does the whole kneeling before the king thing and king raru by the way you remember the sage of light from ocarina guess what that guy's name is hecken raru and i'm about to lay on a beach and chase pigs right now like i am sorry anyway once you're done up here in the sky you put the master sword into a pedestal and you send it back through time to zelda and then you kind of yell at her hey send back a sports almanac but she doesn't hear you so i guess you're not getting rich she's ashamed because rupees are a real issue in this game i played for 150 hours and i have like three i can't afford anything i'm broke i saved hyrule and i'm broke why will no one give me money right after you send the master sword back this happens which after finishing the game i now realize how cheeky this is nintendo yes southern jen you jumped out of the sky and you fall down to the land of hyrule and it never ceased to amaze me how seamless this transition is and the draw that just the draw distance is insane for the switch i mean as you're falling you can see all the way from the gerudo desert to freaking goren mountain and it's all crystal clear there's no loading screen or anything as you fall towards the ground at breakneck speeds as a long time zelda van this makes me happy because i know it's what they wanted from skyward soar you could dive out of the clouds to the ground below but due to the limitation of the way you balance board the developers weren't able to achieve this seamless descent so you could only dive at these specific points but now you got the full thing baby it all comes back around it's moments like these that really make me feel like breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom are the zelda games that we've just been waiting to get that nintendo has been slowly in bits and pieces making across the years and that we finally get to mesh all of the zelda puzzle pieces together and you get breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom i mean it's not even new news that nintendo have been pushing their consoles to the limit with what is kind of an open world look at wind waker for example that also had a large open world with no load screens at least you know i didn't see them because i was a little kid and i didn't understand how games work and i only learned later that the reason why traveling the ocean was so heck and slow is because the game was loading the next part of the game while you were sailing i mean i wasn't smart i mean i was a kid when i was a kid i thought if i ate a watermelon seed a watermelon might grow inside me and i'd die so you know i'm lucky i finished high school just like that your back baby the old stomping grounds now in the first order of business where are those great fairies i want to make sure they still have those big personalities what i love about the first time you land on hyrule is it's familiar but as we talked about very different and nintendo were really smart about doing this the second you even land on the grass of hyrule you already have a ton of things in your inventory that you've never had before like all these wacky zonai devices well as a bunch of other items and weapons the brand new abilities a sudden need for a manicure not to mention all the sky islands you'll see floating above with debris falling everywhere a new blank canvas of a world map and a large sense of adventure for both returning and new players a brand new adventure is about to be so i mean are we like dead set on finding zelda i'm i'm not i'm not like i'm not asking for any specific reason i'm just saying that link has options yeah it follows a very similar structure but this time around tears of the kingdom feels like way more full of a game for starters mpc characters are scattered everywhere and they'll have side missions recipes juicy goss i mean even the most least important npc i'm sorry to upset you you're not important but even the least important mpcs will still comment on the time of day or even the weather which helps make the entire world feel so much more alive there's literally like 57 000 i counted them don't test me i promise caves and nooks and crannies to explore and i already hated the expression nooks and crannies because it sounds like that part between every buddy's leg at the top it's like a nook and a cranny and then you got the shrines and the puzzles the challenges the midi games the corks to abuse relentlessly it's like the main thing that everybody just agrees is okay to do in this game hang them up on a cross burning at the altar guys are sick that's my one actually i did that one pretty proud of that i insist it's impossible to take a step in any direction without getting distracted either by the game or by yourself deciding it's time to just build a jet plane for some reason see you later oh my god the sense of discovery is unlike anything i've ever experienced in a video game before i mean i had so many preconceived notions on how to play breath of the wild and i had to shed so many of those as i played tears of the kingdom and the more tears brained i became the better my experience was for it i mean this is me building a platform on day one to solve a puzzle as opposed to me solving something now and every player is going to play this game so differently and i think the best example of that is and this is brilliant by nintendo just looking at the sign guy this guy is so stupidly unassuming with his dumb little haircut but he is a perfect representation of the game as a whole how does each player mush their gooey squishy little brain meats into each one of his sign puzzles no two players structures for any one puzzle is going to ever look the same and it showcases perfectly that one way or another everybody is going to be able to beat this game that is the fastest anyone has ever done it i don't care what you say it's just their version of beating the game might look like this or like this or whatever that is or none of it at all because at the end of the day you don't even have to give this guy a moment of your time you can completely ignore him and still have a great experience finishing the game i mean you would be sadistic to leave this poor little guy out cold and alone shivering and holding up his sign with that stupid haircut and if i could give one more great example take a look at the flux construct battles this enemy is designed perfectly for tears of the kingdom because you can use all of your abilities on him in different ways ascend you can start grabbing his little pieces and throwing them away you can even use recall on him in moments there's so many different ways to approach this battle with the abilities and your items and your weapons and then at the end of the battle you even get to use fuse on this thing that it drops which i think we can all agree to pretend isn't his spiky shlong because i mean what else is it all the other enemies drop body parts this is this is something he had on him ribbed for her flesh and even the familiar story beats feel anything but familiar at times because they're all amplified specifically so this time we have temples which act like old school Zelda dungeons even complete with big badass boss battles at the end and i i i know i keep during parallels to ocarina but tell me that some of these bad guys don't look like ocarina bad guys or just classic zelda enemies in general my fandom is on fire when breath of the wild released a lot of people complained that there wasn't dungeons which i mean boohoo you also didn't have tingle and i'm pretty sure that guy isn't allowed for five miles of a school zone so i mean we can take and leave some things you know but people hated the divine beasts like the divine beasts they said more like the please redesign beasts good one you guys that said that yeah i didn't miss the dungeons though and it's because i saw it like this in breath of the wild that game was so open ended you could beat it any way you wanted in any order you wanted whereas old school zelda dungeons were so strict and linear to their own detriment at times looking at you the water temple maybe if that was a little less linear we all wouldn't have got stuck underwater for hours on it often with old zelda dungeons you also had to get a specific item from them like the hookshot or the boomerang in order to solve the dungeon and then you need that item for the next dungeon so you always got to do it in a very specific order and that completely contrasts and goes against what nintendo were trying to create with breath of the wild and that is where the idea of divine beasts came in these larger puzzles you could solve in any order with whatever items you have on hand you know not so much a dungeon and also i will admit not so much fun they were okay but now in tears of the kingdom with all these new zonai devices and wacky abilities nintendo found a way to merge these ideas to fuse them as it was how many times can i use the fuse joke not so much giving us classic old school strict dungeons but rather these more open temples that is like a giant puzzle with puzzle pieces lying everywhere over the ground but nintendo were like you don't have to pick up the puzzle pieces you can kind of just mush your own pieces into the puzzle as long as you do it it's fine have fun it's like they handed us a 500 piece lego set and said just use the next you beg of me watch these beyblades i don't care just make it work somehow let him rip like when i visited the fire temple the last gong i couldn't find a way into the stupid towers a big tower and i think i was supposed to get in near the top somehow because i saw layers to it it was at the bottom but i couldn't figure it out for like an hour i was looking everywhere and then i finally had this dumb thought a dumb thought that shouldn't work that wouldn't have worked in any other game but i got one of those fire hydrant things and started spitting all over the lava and like created rocks that i stepped on and i joined them together and made a platform and then i got underneath the tower and i zipped up through it and just got the gong and walked out of the room and that is one of those moments i will remember about this game forever and it's just how i broke it every single aspect of this game has been improved over the last even something as simple as stables in the last game they were just a place to pick up and drop off your horse but now there is a multiple side quest to be found at each stable as well as a larger ongoing side quest that encourages you to visit every single stable and at every stable you'll also find a bunch of characters well as you can spelunk down and find things under dogs that you just can't pet i don't know why you still can't pet them it is a big floor nintendo that needs fixing you can even earn pony points now at stables that you can use to unlock rewards and the first time you visit a stable they give you all your old horses for the last game which means oh my god blow me i thought you stables weren't even an element of the game that i would think about before and now they've become such a focal point and one of my favorite parts of the game it also encourages me to use my horse a little more because now with all the zonai devices i can just build my own airbike or i mean i really could just build my own horse you know blooby doesn't let me climb on inside and go for a ride okay yeah no i heard it flying around in an airship that you built yourself would be fun in any game but the fact that it's zelda makes the contrast so much more exciting like yeah driving 80 miles an hour on a freeway might feel pretty normal but you do it in a school zone and you really get that rush and don't get me started on some of the wacky things that you guys are building online it's like we're not even playing the same game at the time building is specifically helpful in the depths where you can't bring your horse and believe me i've tried it's brilliant that in a game where they added building they also gave you a whole area of the map that requires you to do so the ground is covered in glue that'll sap your health which encourages you to get around in other creative ways like building a four by four or a truck or a i don't know whatever your little stupid brain comes up with you know minecraft is the number one selling third party switch game so i wouldn't be surprised if nintendo took a lot of inspiration from them mine for materials and fight creepy creepers there's a lot to discover down here in the depth activating a light route will light up the area like the fourth of july and for every light route there's an equivalent shrine above which not only makes them easy to find but my god there's so many of them almost every point of interest above there's something to find hidden underneath which really helps make these two worlds feel connected and that's before we even get up into the sky there isn't all that much going on up in the sky i managed to knock most of it out in a day or two but i will say there is no wasted space every single island will have something going on and most likely be worth the trip one of my favorite things is finding the old maps which will then send you back downstairs looking for rarer loot i spent so much time in the sky and underground but on the rare occasion i actually came out for air and stepped foot on the land of hyrule i remembered oh yeah there's a whole game out here oh but i didn't kill the frog thing god damn it i have heard so many people say breath of the wild wasn't really for me but tears of the kingdom is incredible and even i as a huge fan of breath of the wild have to admit it's gonna be a little tough to go back to that game ever again it's because it's like this game but less this is like so so so much less like the difference between me and bob and i'm not saying it makes breath of the wild look bad it could never that's still a 10 out of 10 game it's just that tears is genre defying it's elevated the video game industry and games as a whole it's unironically created its own tear in the kingdom of zelda games not diminishing the efforts of its predecessors but setting a new standard for the franchise it is impossible not to have fun while playing to not feel smart every time you saw the puzzle whether it's something small like realizing that you can block rain to set something on fire or something fun like making a platform and using the physics to launch yourself into oblivion trapping NPCs in dead boxes or figuring out difficult shrines before you end up like that one guy in the resident evil movie or hijacking a yiga plane like like like uh you know what i don't have a good example for that one this game has so much content and you are free to do as much of it or as little of it as you want but however much you do do you can do it all your way and yes i said dude the amount of zonai devices nintendo gave us to mess around within this game is out of control they really said hey how can we give as many tools as possible to the players to break this game this is literally a platform that just hovers wherever you want it to go in a game that is so many of the puzzles need platforming they just gave you a platform really and and look at the sign guys sign guys more like why even try guy oh oh i probably shouldn't make a joke about cheating and try guys you can take two of these platforms and like 10 year old me in my kitchen playing hot lava on a couple of stools you can just rotate one after the other and keep pop popping along to wherever you want to go into your smack end to the kitchen counter wings fans rockets balloons nintendo said hey you guys want to fly in this game with that flying fools i mean sure some of these items write themselves and they're a little obvious but then you have ones like the stabilizer which couldn't really only come from nintendo play testing their games from our own end and realizing that hey this might actually help keep some of the wacky stupid things people create standing upright like it helps when building motorcycles which yeah you can make motorcycles in this game you don't even need to pay $20 for the dlc nintendo just said you can do it and then you got all the killing things all the pull down get the death things like the freeze and the fire and the beans and the rockets that you can use to create massive mechs and killing machines and you guys really need to go outside and touch some grass although some of you literally made lawnmowers to cut the grass why it's like what i mean you could farm for rice which that's actually really smart and it doesn't stop there you've got batteries bombs mirrors springs cooking pots i mean and almost all of this can be fused to your weapons or your shields or and the most impressive of all of it to me is just the simple unassuming steering stick you know it doesn't really do anything on its own but no matter what you build or what you build on or with you stick this stick somewhere on it and it will control everything that's attached this allows you to turn anything into a car bike plane and i mean anything once again this game will never tell you no like it's maybe it should sometimes like you probably shouldn't turn a cork into a dirt bike but if you really wanted to get in now i'm not really someone to look a gift horse in the mouth but if i was to complain about something in this game uh it has to be these guys after completing each temple the sages will give you a new infinity stone for your gauntlet so you could raise higher and that allows their spirit forms to follow you around everywhere all the time and grant you powers powers like you got in the first game but all these ones are like suckier versions of those sorry they're also just a giant pain in the colossal ass to try and use one of you give me an ability please and anyone i mean i'm 150 hours in and you can't tell me that side-on's ability is borderline useless just just watch even the point my guy deactivated and he'll give you a bubble shield which can take one hit of damage but you lose it after a short period of time but not using it or after attacking it just spritzes them in the face with water i go out in my backyard and and splash my dog with more powerful jets of water from our garden hose sprinkler also to activate any of their abilities you have to run up to them and give them a super secret Boy Scouts handshake before they'll allow you to use it which is super impractical because during fights they're either dick deep in enemies or just nowhere to be seen or or or grouped up together and a little mighty dogs huddle and you're gonna run up to them and just spam a and play the Russian roulette of which ability will i get and probably not the right one thanks side-on for spinning on me again i do like Tullen's ability a lot i mean when i'm flying around he'll just snap to my back and just blow me towards where i'm going it's like a speed boost it's awesome just remember to put Tullen away before you're picking up any good loop otherwise you'll just blow it all to kingdom top i will say that they're all great in a fight i like having them all out alongside me i mean Tullen will headshot like an absolute champ so it's worth having them all even if it's at the cost of about five frames per sage i mean that's honestly probably my only complaint in this otherwise near-perfect experience you know well that and maybe the loop but was to get real nitpicky the loot feels like a real issue every single chest either has a decayed weapon or another shield of bold that i just don't need and can't fit that's all i get you know what i'd have a lot of opals this game just throws opals at you like that tick-tock suit okay opals are the true treasure in this game my god i'm sick of doing a lot of work for nothing and if you don't believe me there's actually a side mission called true treasure that gives you an opal as a reward actually it gives you two opals i have no reason to sit here and just rehash the entire story other than to gush over it so let's do that it was incredible when twists and turns so turny and twisty even cheeto the cheetah would be impressed whoa i'm a need a minute nintendo have really outdone themselves i can't believe this is the same company that in the last 25 years the only big story development with mario is seeing his stinky little grippers in the sand tears of the kingdom story is as deeply layered as the world itself from links standpoint zelda never even left she was right there from the moment he failed to save her and zelda's story in this game is so sorrow like it's just so sad the tears of the kingdom are literally her tears because she she had to live through a war again see multiple people she cared about perish then turned herself into this dragon in the most painful and shocking zelda cut scene we've ever been given and then just left to mindlessly roam the skies of hyrule for supposedly hundreds hundreds of thousands of years just crying just crying up there and all the while with the master sword embedded into her skull as she heals it and also in embeds it with light energy to make it stronger than it ever was before because yeah the master sword is a canon super saiyan now and this again adds to that weight in the story i was talking about when i said even ganondorf in his most weakest form could destroy the master sword like it was nothing and now we know that it's been waiting years for link to find it and use it in the face of pure evil my second time and also my legs and my brain and my arms and my butt they all turn to mush when i went when master koga who by the way i love that back in this game there's such a great arc i didn't know i needed more master koga in this equal but i did also the original person to fold down a chasm you find him and he tells you what ganon is and it's like of course yeah of course he's under hyrule castle of course he is but on top of that wait a second how long has he been there for because uh leading up to the release of the game we were all wondering if you could go straight to ganon that was a big question and nintendo never talked about it and then i started playing the game and no one told me that i could go beat ganon they would like go to the four regions but poor didn't say anything this guy didn't say anything that guy said nothing that guy's a damn tight lit loser the whole time he's just and my first thought then was wait so you could you could just rush ganon but then the whole the whole story is about the master sword and giving it to zelda and her sacrificing herself so wouldn't it be really silly to go beat ganon with like a stick in the power of god an anime like i said earlier and not even use the master sword but then i remember she she comes to you at the end of the fight she comes to your aid so if you didn't have the master sword you're sure as shit do now and then at the end when link wakes up falling and he sees zelda heartling down towards the ground he realizes this is his chance to do what he couldn't afford to save her to dive after her and catch her so without even thinking like i look the hero he is he charges forward reaching out to her trying to do what he failed to do before and then we get the shot that mirrors the same shot from the start of the game but before but there was nothing but darkness and despair now there's a blinding overwhelming light this one goes out to that one girl that'll always try to save princess zelda but with you eat this cool zelda zelda zelda zelda well you know after i've completed every single side quest and also found the tingle outfit oh queen sonja and a king rara thousand mobs of moblins couldn't keep me from you princess zelda at the end of the 30 years of silence link finally opens his mouth and says i never yeah zelda tears of the kingdom has taught us many things that video games can still surprise us the correct pronunciation of chasm a lot of people kept calling this a chasm i'm really sure where that came from and that despite the video game industry so eager to churn out the yearly blockbuster one after another after another after another sometimes it pays to slow down and take your time because the great miyamoto once said the game will be ready when it's ready or something like that i don't remember my hope is that more games take inspiration from tears of the kingdom more games that take off the training wheels and allow players to play the game the way they want but without asking why are we trying to play that way or punishing us for trying to play a way that maybe wasn't intended because sometimes cheating is fun me two years old still a reminder that for myself