2023 May Retrospective

May was officially the proverbial “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Month”, which got released and of course just like I anticipated it’s already my game of the year, without even a shadow of a doubt.

I only got to play it a week after the initial release, because I wanted to have a physical copy, just like I did when Breath of the Wild came out back in 2017, which feels like a lifetime ago now.

Take a look at a short (30 seconds) clip of me roaming around early in the game, so no spoilers, I promise.

I probably spent a good 4-5 hours, before I even considered leaving the starting area. It’s just so good.

As someone who put somewhere between 350 and 400 hours into Breath of the Wild, I can already tell that I will end up spending around the same if not more when it comes to Tears of the Kingdom.

In BoTW, I found all the shrines, maxed out health and stamina, found enough Koroks to unloock all inventory slots, completed all the DLC content except Trial of the Sword and some side-quests related to armor sets, also maxed out the ancient armor set, etc.

Still only got a completion percentage of about 60%, which shocked me to be honest.

Now, with all that laid out in the open and being 100% vulnerable on the information super-highway like that; starting ToTK with only 3 hearts, one stamina wheel, and no Revali’s Gale, it did feel a bit underwhelming at first, to say the least, but then it got better as I started uncovering the entire map, which was the first thing I did with BoTW as well.

I am still a bit on the fence when it comes about not having something akin to Revali’s Gale, and no I don’t consider Ascension to be a direct replacement; perhaps there will be something later into the game, but I haven’t gotten that far with the main quest line just yet in order to know.

The Zonai Devices are of course supposed to come in handy when it comes to replacing and even outdoing the old powers, since now you can easily just put some springs on top of each other and launch yourself into the air, or use fans and so forth, but considering that you need to farm Zonai charges in exchange for them, they do not feel like a direct replacement.

Another thing that I feel like it can be finicky is the radial menu, which I understand why it was done, but it just feels a bit clunky to use at first as well.

Other than these minor gripes, everything else just works and I can’t wait to explore every inch of the world and discover all there is to discover in the coming weeks and months.

What do I think about the item duplication bugs and the fact that Nintendo did end up patching some of them already, and probably patch more of them as people discovering them?

The only thing about I’ll say is that the game should (or probably will) get a “creative game mode” with infinite resources, so that one can just truly enjoy it as a sandbox without having to worry too much about farming resources, which can feel like a chore at times.