The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The Probable Game Of The Year Winner

It is rare that a piece of media comes along and it very clearly sets the standard for the rest of the year. It happened last year with Everything Everywhere All At Once on the movie side of things, however, this year The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has done that to such a degree that it is unlikely that another game will come along this year that can even come close in terms of quality. Its predecessor The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is widely considered to be one of the best games ever made, however, Tears of the Kingdom is such an improvement that it makes Breath of the Wild look like a tech demo.

Tears of the Kingdom picks up after Breath of the Wild and follows Link and Zelda as they explore the depths of Hyrule castle and accidentally unleash a new evil that picks up a huge piece of Hyrule and causes it to float in the sky. Link has his old abilities and powers erased by this evil and he has to traverse Hyrule again to regain his powers, save Zelda, and defeat the evil once again.

Much like the predecessor, the game is an open world where, after one completes the tutorial and receives all the necessary powers, they are free to do anything they want in whatever order they want. They can spend time exploring or they can spend time progressing the main story and either option is just as rewarding as the other. The new abilities make exploration a rewarding experience and make it so completing puzzles never feel like someone has to figure out exactly what the main solution is and if they don’t it does not feel like they are cheating.

The world is massive. Beyond just Hyrule being as large as it was in Breath of the Wild, there is a challenging underground portion that is the same size as the aboveground world of Hyrule and a massive archipelago of floating islands to explore. The load times have also been cut down when entering shrines which is a nice quality-of-life improvement game to game. There is a certain puzzle-solving element to exploration and combat to the point where the gameplay of these portions does not seem punishingly difficult.

Tears of the Kingdom is far and away the best game to come out so far in 2023 and will likely be the best game to come out in the year by a country mile. The gameplay is so innovative and the world is so massive that it is incredibly easy to clock 20 to 30 hours without actually progressing the story. For a first game to be offered at a $70 price tag (and taking into consideration the Switch’s hardware limitations) this game is an achievement and is very much worth the price it is being offered for.

Final Rating: 10/10