After years of hype,Tears of the Kingdomis finally here. The next installment inThe Legend of Zeldaseries, and while most of you likely expected it to be nearly as good asBreath of the Wild, in the eyes of some, its sequel is even better. Tears of the Kingdom is the highest-rated game ever right now according to OpenCritic, a full two spots higher than its predecessor.Tears of the Kingdom hasa score of 97 on OpenCriticbased on 63 reviews. Not too shabby. A quick look atthe overall ranking on OpenCriticreveals that’s one point more than Breath of the Wild, which sits in third, and the same score asSuper Mario Odysseywhich also has a 97.RELATED:Please Take Your Time With Tears Of The KingdomOpenCritic has stepped in to explain why Tears of the Kingdom is above Super Mario Odyssey. While its site only shows a game’s score rounded to the nearest whole number, behind the scenes, the average score is rounded to three decimal places. At last count, Tears of the Kingdom has a score of 97.223, while Mario Odyssey has a 96.811. Breath of the Wild settled on a score of 95.905, so technically, Tears of the Kingdom has scored more than a full point higher than its older sibling.
Now, things change. OpenCritic posted those very accurate numbers less than an hour after the review embargo on Tears of the Kingdom lifted. However, at the time of typing this, Tears of the Kingdom is still sitting atop the OpenCritic pile. Reviews will continue to pour in over the weekend though, and there’s even an outside chance any of the top three gets a review that alters their score years from now. A review for Citizen Kane discovered almost a century laterlost the iconic movie its perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Tears of the Kingdom’s Metacritic scorepaints a different picture. At 96, not only is the newest Zelda game not the highest-rated game of all time, it doesn’t even make the top 20.Red Dead Redemption 2andMetroid Primeare currently higher than it, not to mentionOcarina of Timewhich is Metacritic’s highest-scoring game ever. Again, that might change as more reviews are published in the coming days. Maybe as more reviewers discoverBreath of the Wild’s annoying shrine alert noise is a thing of the past, that score will creep up.
