Tears of the Kingdom is a special game. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s special. I think a large part of that for me is because it’s aZeldagame. Zelda is one of my favourite series of all time, and jumping into Tears of the Kingdom’sclose recreation of Breath of the Wild’s Hyruleis like jumping into the warm embrace of a grizzly bear. You know it’s only a matter of time before it mauls you to death, but right here and now, in this moment, you’re happy.
I playedBreath of the Wildlike most people, slowly at first and then all at once. After the initial,slow, methodical exploration of Hyrule, you get lost in a thousand side quests and minor adventures and suddenly you realise it’s 4am on a Monday morning and you started playing Friday and where has the time gone. I played that game for hundreds of hours on a single save file and still haven’t scratched the surface.
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However, I also moved on pretty quickly. I put the vast majority of those hours in during the first couple of months after I bought the game. I didn’t forget those experiences, but I was soon lost in another big RPG or back to shooting fools inApex Legends. By the time I wanted to jump back into the Switch’s version of Hyrule, Tears of the Kingdom was announced and trailers were dropping.
I waited for Tears of the Kingdom instead, and I’m glad I did thanks to how similar the games’ geography are. When the stunning collector’s edition arrived on my doorstep, I unboxed it slowly, and I’ve played the game like that too. I wanted to feel the weight of every item in the big box, I wanted to savour every area in Hyrule. There are so many small details hidden away in caves, so many stories tucked into a valley that 90 percent of players will wander past, so I’m taking it as slowly as possible.
This has had a couple of effects on my experience. Firstly, I’m behind just about everyone else in my workplace and friendship groups. I’m fine with that, and their excitement and praise reassures me that Nintendo has stuck the landing. Secondly, picking the game back up after a few days away brings whole new perspectives and amazements. Whether I’ve saved on a mountaintop or in the midst of a particularly tricky puzzle, I often find myself loading in and being struck with wonder all over again. You just don’t get that ‘oh yeah, I remember how cool this specific part of the game was’, if you’re playing in mammoth sessions. Giving myself space to breathe between Zelda sessions gives my mind a chance to think about other things, be they games or otherwise, and that makes jumping back into the game all the more special.
I’ve not met half of the characters that my peers have, I’ve not explored half the regions – The Depths in particular have barely featured in my playthrough so far,barring a certain fight club– but it’s not going anywhere. Hyrule is still there for me to explore, sitting inside my Switch, ready for me to come and get it at my leisure.
Playing this way has also made me appreciate the smaller moments more. Short quests at stables and helping villagers out may take up a whole Switch session, after which I turn off and mull the last hour over. I think about the game a lot more, especially those small moments and little touches, rather than blitzing through it and likely forgetting half of what made it so special in lieu of remembering the biggest, most bombastic moments.
This has had an effect outside of Zelda, too. I’ve found myself moving away from live-service titles because there are too few of those small, special moments in between the rank-ups and battle royale wins. It’s all big picture, all ‘win nine matches to rank up’, and too few overhead kicks. I’ve kicked Ultimate Team to the side and don’t play half as much Apex as I used to, and a large part of that is thanks to experiencing Zelda slowly, an hour or two at a time.
With ballooning development times and Zelda developers taking their time to release new games, I want to make this last. Tears of the Kingdom will likely be the only Zelda game released this decade, so I’m savouring it. I’m thoroughly testing every new mechanic, really listening to every new character, and making this game last. I already know I’m going to put well over 100 hours into this game, so why force myself to crunch that over a month? I’ll do it over a year, maybe longer. Tears of the Kingdom is a game to savour, and I’m going to lick every last morsel clean, even if it takes me a lifetime.
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