Does Tears of The Kingdom REALLY Deserve All The Perfect Scores? – Review/Opinion
It’s big and clever, but is Tears of the Kingdom really worth all those perfect 10s?
You might have seen loads of perfect scores for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on Metacritic by now. Big names like IGN, Gamespot, Destructoid, Nintendo Life, and VGC gave it top marks.
But does that really mean everyone will love it?
Zelda is a huge deal from the giant that is Nintendo. Nintendo usually makes games that are fun and easy for everyone. But this new Zelda game isn’t your typical easy-to-play game.
Unlike games like Mario Odyssey that you can just pick up and enjoy, Tears of the Kingdom asks more of you. It’s detailed and tricky. It takes time to learn all its secrets. Each player can have a unique experience, which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not what we’re used to from Nintendo.
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The Ups and Downs of Hyrule
Even though the game can be tough to learn, it’s beautiful to look at despite the limitations of the Switch. Sure, it would be cool to see it in super high-quality 4K at 60 frames per second, but it’s still impressive what Nintendo can do with the Switch, and how good the art teams are.
In 2023, I’ve played a lot of different games like Dead Space Remake, Hogwarts Legacy, Atomic Heart, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Dead Island 2, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Each of these games has different controls and ways to play, but moving from one to the next is quite manageable because they all share certain modern trends and thinking where control schemes are concerned. With Tears of the Kingdom, just like Breath of the Wild… it’s not the case.
Playing this again was just like going back to Breath of the Wild, which also had similar, unique controls. In Tears of the Kingdom, it felt like things hadn’t gotten any easier. Even after playing lots of other games, I still found myself pressing the wrong buttons.
Access Denied
Tears of the Kingdom can lead to really cool and creative gameplay ideas that you won’t forget anytime soon. It’s an impressive game that shows the creative smarts behind it – but where are the basic accessibility options that we see everywhere else these days? Never mind adaptive controllers, what about just being able change buttons on your controller layout beyond just swapping jump and run?
But don’t get me wrong, this game also has moments of awesomeness. However, this game isn’t for everyone.
It asks more of you than Breath of the Wild, and its tough controls might be too much for some people. But, the puzzles are cool, the creative parts are fun, and the expanded map from the first game is well-done, even though a brand new map would have been nice.
Maybe this game is a perfect 10, but only for super Zelda fans and people who loved Breath of the Wild.
