There is fiddliness here that I would be disinclined to put up with if everything else weren’t so peerlessly entertaining. With all this flexibility comes a lot of complexity. ‘Every time I think I’ve got a handle on it, it reveals a new expanse.’ Photograph: Nintendo It doesn’t just guide you towards predetermined solutions it lets you come up with your own. It is so creatively empowering, and supremely intellectually satisfying. ![]() ![]() You could find a chunk of rock that fell from the sky, cling to it, and rewind time so that it zooms back up towards the heavens. You could enter a cave at the base and use Link’s Ascend ability to swim through the ceiling and pop up somewhere else. You could fuse a rocket to your shield and zoom skywards, then glide towards your destination. You could stick some balloons to a platform, climb on, light some fires, and rise upwards. Trying to get to a shrine on top of a mountain? You could climb it, cooking up a few elixirs beforehand to keep your speed and stamina up. In combination with Link’s weapons and abilities, this gives you probably four or five ways to approach almost any situation. I misaligned a rocket on a floating platform and accidentally sent myself flying sideways off it, rather than rising majestically into the air as planned. Attaching a fan to my shield out of curiosity resulted in a hilarious run-in with some Bokoblins, in which I simply blew them backwards off the roof of their fort. Once, trapped in a blizzard in the snowy highlands, I improvised a rocket-powered sled and clung on for dear life as it careened down the hillside, totally out of control. Almost every time, Tears of the Kingdom answers the question “what happens if I do this?” with “something fun”. Messing around with self-made contraptions led me to so many unexpected moments of glory, and also hilarity. Plentiful mechanical devices – from steering wheels to rockets to springs and fans – power your creations, letting you build planes, go-karts, catapults, almost anything you can think of. You can construct rafts or wagons or hot-air-balloons or wonky ladders from things you find lying around. Plonk a dazzling seed on your shield and it’ll blind enemies who strike you fuse a monster eye with your arrow and it’ll seek its target. Hero Link’s magic arm lets you pick up, move around and stick together almost anything in the game’s world. But Tears of the Kingdom also offers a hitherto unimagined level of freedom when it comes to how you approach its many challenges. This is the realisation of a promise hinted at by Zelda: Skyward Sword many years ago. The kingdom of Hyrule is vast and full of diversions, and being able to move freely between the skies and the ground down below is a thrill that never wears off. ![]() The sense of freedom here is intoxicating. Weapons can be combined or even invented in battle. Then I’d come out the other side to see an as-yet-undiscovered sky tower in the distance, batter some monsters on my way towards it (with the help of a flame-throwing shield I spontaneously invented earlier), build a makeshift go-kart out of some parts I found near their camp, ride it halfway up a mountain towards the tower, start a fire to burn up the thorny bushes blocking the entrance, climb the tower, catapult myself into the sky, spot a glowing shrine on a floating islet, glide towards it and get caught up solving the puzzle within … Three hours later I’d somehow be halfway up Death Mountain on the other side of the map, the village chief would still be waiting, and my abandoned horse would still be pawing the ground outside that cave. I would set off from a stable to meet up with a village chief, spot a couple of people arguing outside a cave, jump off my horse to investigate and go spelunking. Tears of the Kingdom gives you a path to follow, if you want to, but I found it impossible to stay on track for long without getting up to shenanigans. Tens of hours later, you are the same elven guy, now clothed in quirky fashions that you’ve found in caves or bought from artisans in far-flung villages, carrying around a hodgepodge arsenal of amusing weapons that you’ve scavenged from ruins or fused together from rocks and sticks, and replete with stories about your many misadventures. You begin as a semi-naked elven guy with a magical arm, stuck on an island in the sky.
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