Nintendo The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - update: 10+ million copies sold worldwide in first three days (fastest selling title in the Zelda series)

[best3444]

2 hours ago, Biggie said:

I never truly had any actual fun playing BotW. This will be exactly more of the same with some fancy game mechanics thrown in there. No thanks.

 

I understand. You may end up being right. 

[Kal-El814]

I know BotW has flaws I was just too busy vibing to care even after a couple runs, my last one being on Master Mode where I finished all the shrines and did all the Master Trials.

 

I didn't love weapon durability (though I came to appreciate it and eventually upgrades made it irrelevant for me), how the horses handled, discovery could have been made better without compromising the sense of exploration, would have been rad to cook multiple instances of the same food at a time, etc.

 

It all just came together in a way where none of that mattered for me. I had so much fun just doing stupid shit and this seems to be doubling down on that. I'm so ready.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Matthew "Critical Role" Mercer just announced that he's the English voice actor for Ganondorf:

 

Matt Mercer confirmed as the voice of Ganondorf in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

GONINTENDO.COM

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Talk about a critical role!

 

[legend]

1 hour ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Matthew "Critical Role" Mercer just announced that he's the English voice actor for Ganondorf:

 

Matt Mercer confirmed as the voice of Ganondorf in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

GONINTENDO.COM

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Talk about a critical role!

 

 

Matt's awesome. Glad it was finally confirmed.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Starting to get pretty excited for this. Question is, do we buy two copies, because I don’t think I can wait til my husband is done with it. And he’ll be the one playing for like 8 hours a day, lol. 

[Brick]

19 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Aah I got it wrong for sure. L.

 

You now must hand in your Zelda Fan Card, and have lost the privileges to buy and/or play the game. Sorry those are the rules. 

[legend]

8 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Starting to get pretty excited for this. Question is, do we buy two copies, because I don’t think I can wait til my husband is done with it. And he’ll be the one playing for like 8 hours a day, lol. 

 

Not that my vote matters, but I vote yes, get two! No reason you should be left out!

[MarSolo]

16 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Starting to get pretty excited for this. Question is, do we buy two copies, because I don’t think I can wait til my husband is done with it. And he’ll be the one playing for like 8 hours a day, lol. 

Not the same situation, but I ended up buying Breath of the Wild TWICE, preordered the Switch version without thinking that it might be hard to get a Switch opening night. Didn’t get a Switch until November that year, so the Friday release day I ended up buying the Wii U version digitally.

 

I regret nothing!

[CastlevaniaNut18]

8 hours ago, legend said:

 

Not that my vote matters, but I vote yes, get two! No reason you should be left out!

 

3 minutes ago, MarSolo said:

Not the same situation, but I ended up buying Breath of the Wild TWICE, preordered the Switch version without thinking that it might be hard to get a Switch opening night. Didn’t get a Switch until November that year, so the Friday release day I ended up buying the Wii U version digitally.

 

I regret nothing!

We probably will. We each bought a copy of BOTW. He just plays faster than me. 

[5timechamp]

I like that the final trailer showed tons of things yet we remain in the dark about various aspects of the game to include mechanics…

 

I am as informed and uninformed as I want to be going in… anything is on the table

[EternallDarkness]

8 hours ago, MarSolo said:

Not the same situation, but I ended up buying Breath of the Wild TWICE, preordered the Switch version without thinking that it might be hard to get a Switch opening night. Didn’t get a Switch until November that year, so the Friday release day I ended up buying the Wii U version digitally.

 

I regret nothing!

 

I have the Wii U version and the Switch version as well. Played and beat it on the WiiiU and then way later ended up getting it for the Switch but only out a few hours into there

[crispy4000]

I never bought the DLC because I heard it sucked, but now I’m stuck needing to buy a Switch copy if I’d ever want to try it.  With the Wii U eShop closed and all. 

[MarSolo]

2 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

I never bought the DLC because I heard it sucked, but now I’m stuck needing to buy a Switch copy if I’d ever want to try it.  With the Wii U eShop closed and all. 

The DLC was great if you did it early enough to make use of the bike.

[Brick]

TV spot

 

 

Looks like that three headed dragon is Gleeok. A Fire Gleeok to be precise. I guess there will be different kinds out in the wild, like maybe a Water Gleeok, or a Thunder Gleeok. 

[nublood]

So does this game look the same docked on both standard and OLED Switch?

[MarSolo]

4 hours ago, Brick said:

TV spot

 

 

Looks like that three headed dragon is Gleeok. A Fire Gleeok to be precise. I guess there will be different kinds out in the wild, like maybe a Water Gleeok, or a Thunder Gleeok. 

The TV spots aren’t the same without Robin Williams. 😢

[5timechamp]

I just want Dark Nuts or/and Iron Knuckles as difficulty/harder than Lynels… a Demon Horsehead if theres time

[best3444]

IGN played it for a few hours. New vid

 

 

[Chris-]

Bacon is going to hate this one lol

[eventide11]

Still on the fence. I really liked BotW for a while but it did get long in the tooth after 70-80 hrs. This pretty much looks like 70$ DLC 

[crispy4000]

10 minutes ago, eventide11 said:

Still on the fence. I really liked BotW for a while but it did get long in the tooth after 70-80 hrs. This pretty much looks like 70$ DLC 

 

I don’t think that statement will age well.

[eventide11]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I don’t think that statement will age well.

I hope not. I'd like to be wrong and enjoy Zelda again. I haven't truly been into one since Ocarina of Time 

[Biggie]

1 hour ago, eventide11 said:

Still on the fence. I really liked BotW for a while but it did get long in the tooth after 70-80 hrs. This pretty much looks like 70$ DLC 

 

2 minutes ago, eventide11 said:

I hope not. I'd like to be wrong and enjoy Zelda again. I haven't truly been into one since Ocarina of Time 

I agree with all of this. BotW lacked one basic ingredient......fun.  This looks like exactly more of that with some new game mechanics added that after a few times nobody will use.

[stepee]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I don’t think that statement will age well.

 

Tbf the only reason I don’t think it’s going to be this is based off of pure blind faith that Nintendo has to have more than that. I’m still waiting to see how it actually is more than that.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I'll post the hands-on previews (and there are a LOT of 'em!) later this evening.

[best3444]

I haven't watched much footage on this or read anything either. It's going to be great, period. 

[eventide11]

1 hour ago, Biggie said:

 

I agree with all of this. BotW lacked one basic ingredient......fun.  This looks like exactly more of that with some new game mechanics added that after a few times nobody will use.

Exactly. I don't need a bunch of tacked on magnetic, physic, time bending features to enjoy a Zelda game. Make the game appeal to my sense of exploration and dread because this or that area looks interesting or dangerous. And don't give me a bunch of physics based mini games that are fun for 3 seconds then become tedious. 

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, stepee said:

 

Tbf the only reason I don’t think it’s going to be this is based off of pure blind faith that Nintendo has to have more than that. I’m still waiting to see how it actually is more than that.

 

I’m not basing it off it being Nintendo.  I’m basing on all the slate mechanics getting retooled, the skyworld and underworld, and a development cycle as long as the first game.

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, Biggie said:

 

I agree with all of this. BotW lacked one basic ingredient......fun.

 

I feel the opposite.  I think they found the fun in BoTW’s open world that Wind Waker in particular was sorely lacking.  They can do better with a sequel, but BotW was a step in the right direction for this kind of Zelda compared to the 3D series’ past.

[eventide11]

8 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I feel the opposite.  I think they found the fun in BoTW’s open world that Wind Waker in particular was sorely lacking.  They can do better with a sequel, but BotW was a step in the right direction for this kind of Zelda compared to the 3D series’ past.

But Twilight Princess tho.. 

[Biggie]

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

I haven't watched much footage on this or read anything either. It's going to be great, period. 

BETTER WAIT FOR REVIEWS

 

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, eventide11 said:

But Twilight Princess tho.. 

 

Twllight Princess’s overworld was vanilla as well.  Very sectioned off, not many secrets in it, and relied a lot on the Twilight Realm.  Riding the horse from area to area was more fun than the boat, but BoTW was still much more fun to explore.  Not to mention no stupid blue rupee glitch.

[MarSolo]

13 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Twllight Princess’s overworld was vanilla as well.  Very sectioned off, not many secrets in it, and relied a lot on the Twilight Realm.  Riding the horse from area to area was more fun than the boat, but BoTW was still much more fun to explore.  Not to mention no stupid blue rupee glitch.

Also, the items in Twilight Princess were next to useless in most cases. That weird gear riding thing? Used in one dungeon and maybe ONE area in the over world. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a playground for goblins

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Nintendo’s sequel encourages hilarious experiments and immersive-sim hijinks

 

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A quick note about me: I can be a bit of a goblin. If a game allows me to peek behind its curtain, I will do so immediately. If a game is promising me freedom of choice, I will exploit that freedom as soon as I can. If a game challenges me to take advantage of its interlocking systems, I will find the spaces in which those systems don’t quite coalesce, and do my best to emphasize the inconsistency. Simply put: I like to cause mischief.

 

So it was with little hesitation that I fused an explosive barrel to my shield within the first 10 seconds of my demo last week. Once a Bokoblin obliterated himself and five of his friends with an errant swing of his club, I nocked an arrow, opened my inventory, fused a bomb flower to the tip of the projectile, and promptly shot a Hinox in the pupil with my makeshift grenade launcher. He didn’t die, so I stuck an ancient flamethrower to the tip of a rusty sword, and lashed him from afar with my newfound flame whip. His health was dwindling, and all it would have taken to finish him off was one normal arrow, but that’s super boring, so I tossed a gob of yellow Chuchu jelly at his feet and caused a localized lightning storm.

 

The storm killed me as well.

 

 

Exploring Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's ocean of airborne islands

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Eurogamer's preview for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, looking at the sky islands and Link's new abilities.

 

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Despite being a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom feels more akin to a Majora's Mask spiritual successor. Not in the terms of cow-stealing aliens, toilet ghosts and imminent death by moon, but in how Majora's Mask transformed the formula the previous title excelled at into a wonderfully unique journey without ever losing what players originally fell in love with. From what I've experienced, Tears of the Kingdom embraces creativity, giving players the opportunity to indulge in their imagination, without sacrificing the adventurous heart of its predecessor. Much of the game still remains a mystery - we're yet to see a dungeon nor know what on Hyrule Zelda is up to - but we do know it will be a heroic venture and one Link can undertake in his underwear.

 

 

 

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaves Breath of the Wild behind – hands-on preview

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We've played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom early! Here's what we thought of the new Fuse powers and massive open world.

 

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These physics-focused systems have so much potential for variety compared to other massive open world games that feel rigid and unresponsive. It has that proper sandbox feel which makes you feel clever for bending the rules of engagement, instead of just going through predetermined motions. All that applies to the puzzles, too. You can manipulate large objects with your powers, platform, interact with ancient technology or get launched into the air; sometimes all within the same activity.

 

So during my relatively brief preview, while I didn’t get to see if the world of Tears of the Kingdom had the same sense of incredible density as Breath of the Wild – and it’s always tempting to fall into the trap of assuming everything you haven’t seen is as great as what you have – it did give me the same daunting feeling of vastness and almost endless exploration.

 

It would be hyperbolic to say if you were late to the party and played 100 hours of Breath of the Wild recently, rather than in 2017, you’re still going to find Tears of the Kingdom completely different. However, the new additions to the core loop make do make this feel like a full sequel, not just an update. The Fuse power steals the show, letting you take an experimental approach to almost everything you encounter.

 

 

 

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Preview - Sky Island Hopping In Hyrule - Game Informer

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Just weeks before launch, we got to play one of the most anticipated games of the year. Here is our hands-on preview.

 

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Leaving my hands-on demo, I'm equal parts excited and intimidated by what The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom brings to the table. On one hand, I cannot wait to see just how clever and nearly game-breaking we can get using these various mechanics; it's truly amazing to see Nintendo react to the community's creativity in Breath of the Wild with a sequel that leans into how players used the mechanics in ways they probably never thought of. In giving players even more tools (and just as many new problems to solve), Nintendo is showing it's not afraid of letting players loose in a massive open world with perhaps the most open-ended mechanics it has ever implemented.

 

Still, there's a part of me that has a familiar sense of worry that my brain won't keep up; it's a similar feeling to what I had when I first fired up Portal 2 (another one of my favorite games of all time). Tears of the Kingdom brings a similar sense of brain-breaking innovation, even in the early hours I experienced. I can't tell you how many times I looked at something with bewilderment, only to think of a new way to use the Recall, Ascend, Fuse, or Ultrahand to create new interactions; there may somehow be even more "Eureka!" moments in Tears of the Kingdom than there were in Breath of the Wild, and that's remarkable to even think about. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom feels like a true evolution of one of the most beloved games of the century, and this demo didn't even touch on the story and featured only minimal combat. I'm excited to learn more about how all these elements work in concert. May 12 can't get here soon enough.

 

 

 

What it’s like to play Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

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A more complex Zelda, made for tinkerers and creators

 

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The bottom line: After an hour with a game that will last far longer, Tears of the Kingdom appears to exemplify the inevitable Zelda franchise ebb to more complex experiences.

• 1998’s streamlined classic The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time led to 2000’s time-looping head-spinner Majora’s Mask. The elegant 2002 Wind Waker eventually led to 2011’s creative but cumbersome Skyward Sword.
• With Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda is getting complicated again.

 

 

Zelda Tears of the Kingdom preview: It's bigger, bolder and more inventive than Breath of the Wild | GamesRadar+

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Link's latest adventure is imaginative and innovative, and already feels like a Game of the Year contender

 

 

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In reality, the choice on offer was almost paralyzing – a physical outcome I inflicted on poor Link in-game several times as a result of poor planning, and my total disregard for the basic principles of gravity. It was all tremendous fun. And while the devs on-hand to help guide us through the demo section kept their cards very close to their chests during an ultra-brief group Q&A at the end of the session, one representative did tell me they'd spotted players creating things they'd never seen before with the Ultrahand and Fuse abilities, despite having spent literal years building the game and tinkering with its systems. 

 

This, for me, is where Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will shine. I don't doubt there's another breathtaking fantasy epic to be discovered here, and I'm certain its world and bosses will be bigger and bolder than anything found in Breath of the Wild. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom enters the world just over a year after Elden Ring redefined our expectations regarding living and breathing open-world spaces, and I suspect Nintendo has paid close attention to FromSoftware's recent meteoric success behind the scenes since. 

 

But it's Tears of the Kingdom's scope for creation that I think will lift it above the rest. I fully expect video-sharing sites to be chock-full of inventive and intuitive player-made concoctions within a matter of days once Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hits store shelves, and I in turn expect news platforms and social media feeds to light up as they struggle to keep pace with all of the cool stuff players are building. I know I'll be one of them. And if you're someone who believes Breath of the Wild raised the bar in the open-world action-RPG genre six years ago, you'd better buckle up – because I'm certain you'll be one of them in the coming weeks too.

 

 

 

Preview: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | Console Creatures

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We went hands-on with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom last week and are left impressed.

 

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I wasn’t ready to leave the demo station and  I L-O-V-E-D my experience with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. In addition, I really found it exciting to see that they showed us the new powers in Link’s arsenal before leaving us to our own devices. I felt a lot less rushed as I was able to think outside of the box without worrying about constraints normally left in by developers. 

 

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom also looks incredible and it’s colourful, feeling like you’re often bathed in light. Everything around you comes alive with the wind, sunlight, and life itself, whether you are in Hyrule or Skyrule. The music is always so soothing and relaxing when you walk around and the tension goes up a notch the moment you are seen by enemies or directly during fights.

 

The puzzles are both simple and complex. In fact, as I said earlier: everything will depend only on you and your ability to analyze and solve these.

 

To wrap it all up, unfortunately, I can’t tell you about the lore that surrounds the game since everything was thought out only to show us the gameplay and how to get started with the game, but I can tell you one thing: if the story is as pleasant as what the adventure reveals to us through these gratifying puzzles and its action that is both intense and fun, you will have in front of you a game which, clearly, is likely to be talked about even more than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

 

 

Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Feels Even More Open-Ended Than You Think - GameSpot

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Hands-on time with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's new building mechanic shows an astonishing level of flexibility and puzzle-solving applications.

 

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By far my favorite moment of the demo, though, came from seeing how these tools could be used to solve puzzles. While I enjoyed Breath of the Wild and its sandbox model, I missed the clockwork precision of classic Zelda puzzles and their intricately tailored solutions. I enjoy the feeling of finding the correct answer, which is slightly different than simply finding a clever way to exploit a physics system. To my surprise, Tears of the Kingdom bridged that gap by presenting open-ended physics-based puzzles, but with solutions that felt so intuitive that I still got the satisfaction of finding my own complicated but "correct" way.

 

At one point, I had to cross a wide chasm to another island on my left side, with a large structure as the pivot point between the two islands. I could move the structure by manipulating and turning a small model of the structure with the Ultrahand. I found I could turn the structure so that a bridge extended to me, which would let me cross onto the structure itself--but then there was no way to get from there to the other island. Or I could turn the bridge towards the structure, but couldn't get onto it. Either way, I was stuck, and my glider wasn't enough to cross the chasm. I needed to figure out how to cross onto the structure, then move it to serve as a bridge onto the next island.

 

After some tinkering, my solution was to make use of the new Recall ability, which rewinds objects to a prior state. I moved the structure into position as a bridge onto the second island, then moved it back to meet me on the first island. I started to cross, then hit it with Recall, rewinding time so that it would move backwards and become a moving platform. I felt very clever for this, but at the moment, it simply felt like the right way to solve the puzzle. I needed a moving platform, so I made one.

 

 

 

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Hands-On Preview: It Lets You Test Out Your Craziest Ideas - IGN

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We played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for hours, and we want to tell you all about our hands-on impressions of Link's latest adventure.

 

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All in all, from Ultrahand to Fuse and dozens of sky islands, these are just some of the things that make this game - the rare direct sequel to a previous Zelda game - feel the most fresh so far. That’s because lots of animations, objects, outfits, sounds, and more feel very similar to Breath of the Wild, which is admittedly a slight letdown based on how much of that game hinged around surprise and discovery. But Tears of the Kingdom is layered (or, uh, tiered) and the way you interact with nearly everything has evolved in creative and dramatic ways, so I have little doubt that there won’t be a million new things to do and see in the full game. For now, I’m giddy to not only experience it all myself but to also see how the surely massive player base will make and break this game in brilliant and silly ways. With every puzzle and conflict having such a ridiculous array of solutions, the results will likely be endlessly astonishing and entertaining, especially if you look at what hardcore Breath of the Wild players have already been doing for years in a game where it often feels like you weren’t supposed to do those things. Nintendo has taken that ideology and legalized it in Tears of the Kingdom and that’s immensely exciting, even if it means there will be lots of hilarious fumbling and falling along the way

 

 

Weapon Durability is Being Addressed in This Weird Way in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - IGN

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In our recent hands-on we got a closer look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Fuse system, which is how it will address the persistent complaints over weapon durability in Breath of the Wild.

 

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Let’s get this out of the way right off the Boko Bat: your weapons will definitely still break in Tears of the Kingdom. You’ll pick up low level swords, spears, and sticks, smack them against a bad guy a few times, do a little damage, and then watch your weapon shatter to pieces in the middle of a fight, sending you scrambling through your inventory for a backup.

 

But Link’s got a really cool new power this time around called Fuse that allows you to strengthen and enhance the properties of a weapon by fusing another item to it. Not only does it make your weapon less likely to break quickly, it also means they’ll do more damage against enemies. Find a horn or a spikey ball in the world, fuse it to your sword, and start attacking. Now your weak sword is a stronger sword which will enhance its durability but it still won’t stop it from breaking, it will just delay the inevitable.

 

However, before your weapon breaks, you can unfuse it from what you originally fused it to, then fuse a brand new item to it which should effectively reset its durability. Unfusing a weapon from an item will destroy the item, but retain the weapon, so if you’ve got a bunch of opals and gems in your inventory, you can hypothetically cycle through them and fuse them to the same weapon over and over as long as you unfuse them right before they break.

 

 

 

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Improves Cooking With a New Pot, Recipe Cards, and More - IGN

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In our recent hands-on with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we got to dig into all the ways that Nintendo's upcoming Breath of the Wild sequel will improve cooking, including introducing a new pot, recipe cards, and more.

 

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Let’s start with your cooking device itself. In Breath of the Wild you generally needed to find a cooking pot in the wild — usually in a village, stable, or similar communal location — to actually combine ingredients into a recipe and make a meal. You could also start a fire anywhere and crudely throw individual edible items onto it and make stuff like cooked apples or hard boiled eggs, but those things didn’t give Link nearly the same boosts as combining two to five things in a pot and cooking up a specific recipe.

 

Tears of the Kingdom circumvents the need to travel to specific locations to cook by giving you a cooking pot Zonai device that effectively allows you to cook almost anywhere in the world, or at least anywhere with a flat surface. Zonai devices are depletable resources that you can manipulate with Link’s new powers like Fuse and Ultrahand, so you’ll be limited by the number of cooking pots you have in your inventory if you want to start cooking while you’re up in the clouds or hanging out on a mountain top down in Hyrule.

 

 

 

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Will Let You Save Build Designs - IGN

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Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom features many unique creations via the Ultrahand, and thankfully you'll be able to save them for later.

 

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Eiji Aonuma’s recent The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay demonstration finally gave us an expanded look at Ultrahand, a new ability that allows you to pick up almost anything and stick them together.

 

The idea of being able to create anything that comes to mind sounded amazing, especially when we learned more about powerful and unique Zonai devices in our hands-on session. However, one glaring downside of the system ingrained deep anxiety: the potential that we’d have to painstakingly recreate these necessary constructs every time we wanted to cross a river or glide over a ravine.

 

After our hands-on with Tears of the Kingdom though, we’re happy to confirm this won’t be the problem we thought it could be because there’s a way to streamline building with Ultrahand.

 

 

 

Tears of the Kingdom: Bombs are Back, You Can Throw Almost Any Item, and More - IGN

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With the clock rapidly ticking down to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we finally got some hands-on time with the game and shared our impressions here. But unshockingly, there's tons more detail for us to unpack.

 

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With the clock rapidly ticking down to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we finally got some hands-on time with the game and shared our impressions here. But unshockingly, there's tons more detail for us to unpack.

 

We've written elsewhere about some of the big changes: there are improvements to cooking, ways to make your weapons more durable, and you can save designs for your more complex Ultrahand builds. But we also wanted to run through some of the smaller changes and upgrades we noticed during our time with Tears of the Kingdom, ranging from the reappearance of bombs to the ability to chuck most of your inventory off a sky island if you want. Here are some of the more interesting bits we noticed:

 

 

 

‘Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’ is like nothing we’ve ever seen before - The Washington Post

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The Post got a sneak preview of Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” the most anticipated game of the year, which looks to continue the series’ dominance over the industry.

 

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I played 70 minutes of the game during a highly curated, in-person preview event held by Nintendo in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Journalists in attendance were the first outside of Nintendo's inner sanctum to have hands-on experience with the year's most anticipated title, which releases May 12. Those minutes washed away any fear that this is a mere update to 2017′s critical and commercial hit "Breath of the Wild," which has sold more than 29 million copies and was often bought along with the Nintendo Switch console. "Tears" will bring many features never seen before in the series.

 

 

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Preview – Another Classic In The Making

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Take a deep breath, it's about to get even wilder

 

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Which brings me to an important observation about the nature of Tears of the Kingdom: this is a finicky game to play. Games like God of War or The Witcher, or even classic Zelda Games like Ocarina of Time – they aren’t finicky. You just explore the world and beat up bad guys. Breath of the Wild was obviously finicky in its own way owing to its weapon durability, and the abilities you were using to solve puzzles, but Tears of the Kingdom is definitely a few orders of magnitude above that. Most of what I encountered required me to stop and think, go in and out of my inventory, use the building system, carefully orient Zonai devices, and manage their power levels, all while trying to collect the necessary raw materials to make all of this possible.

 

As I was playing, I was struck by how much Tears of the Kingdom feels like a survival game. The need to scavenge for everything you’ll use was already in Breath of the Wild, but the Fuse system and the Ultrahand build system all gave me that feeling I would get when playing stuff like Valheim or V-Rising; that feeling of taking stock of the resources you have to hand to see what you can cobble together with them, or picking up and discarding things based on how useful you think they may be to you in future.

 

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Personally I love that feeling but I can already tell that there are going to be some people who look at this and think: “Nah, that’s too much work for me.” If you just want to roll through an action-adventure game that involves swinging a sword a bunch of times, Tears of the Kingdom is very likely not going to be that. Something else that may give people pause is the graphical performance and stability, as the number of frame-rate drops that I experienced in just this slice of the game was concerning.

 

The question I always ask when looking at this stuff is: Does it affect the game, or is it just a visual annoyance? I think it affects the game here in two important ways. The first is that the game does become manifestly less responsive when that frame rate drops and given that the frame rate wasn’t very high to begin with, combat and exploration start to feel pretty crappy when they’re running at circa 15 frames a second.

 

Secondly, and I think almost more importantly, these frame drops remind you that this is still just a video game, and I know that sounds lame but Hyrule is such a special, magical place, and this journey that you’re on is so transportive and immersive. To have these moments where the framerate just dies – it does take you out of that experience.

 

 

 

Hands On: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Indulges Your Idiocy In The Very Best Way

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This just in: Bokoblins hate apples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm54bu1YwjY To say there’s been hype surrounding T...

 

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Performance for the most part is rather solid, but we did notice some instances when using the Ultrahand where the frame rate took a noticeable hit. It's not like it broke the game or ruined our enjoyment at all, but it would be nice to see such wrinkles ironed out.

 

One element that really pleased us was the variety of puzzles in the world itself. What would otherwise have been relegated to a Shrine in Breath of the Wild, such as a series of water-filled reservoirs that could be systematically drained, can just be found out and about, minding their own business in the overworld. It made us feel as though we were actually walking through a functioning ancient civilisation rather than just its ruins, and the whole seamless nature just felt right.

 

Our time with Tears of the Kingdom was brief, and if you take one thing away from this article, let it be that our desire to go back and just spend 50 hours playing with the Ultrahand is overwhelming. From our experience so far, we’re looking at history being made with this game.

 

 

 

 

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Hands-On Preview – A Whole New World

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The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Hands-On Preview – A Whole New World

 

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The biggest change to the world within Tears of the Kingdom is the verticality at play. Not only can you go between a number of sky islands that really range in size, you can also drop below the world to a number of dark caves and mines that really change everything in terms of how the world looks and enemy types.

 

When you’re below ground, you’re able to use the new ability called Ascend to quickly get back to ground level, so that you’re not having to spend your time climbing back up walls and using up that stamina. Link will pop his head up at the surface before fully emerging, in case you want to head back down, or find yourself in strife with enemies at the surface.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Not to put too much of a damper on anyone's excitement, but several of these previews mention that the game's performance can be somewhat...uhhhh..."dire" on occasion:

 

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Something else that may give people pause is the graphical performance and stability, as the number of frame-rate drops that I experienced in just this slice of the game was concerning.

 

The question I always ask when looking at this stuff is: Does it affect the game, or is it just a visual annoyance? I think it affects the game here in two important ways. The first is that the game does become manifestly less responsive when that frame rate drops and given that the frame rate wasn’t very high to begin with, combat and exploration start to feel pretty crappy when they’re running at circa 15 frames a second.