COUNTDOWN: Top Ten Switch Games I Played in 2023 #5 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
This placement on the countdown will probably rub a lot of people the wrong way but we’re all just going to have to accept the fact that not everyone has the same opinion. I know there’s a quality game here and Tears of the Kingdom was an experience which meant quite a bit to many video game players and lovers of the franchise.
It’s just kinda the opposite of everything I loved about BOTW…it’s just kinda too much.
Let’s begin with the obvious and talk about the largest new element introduced here with the fusing ability. This is an addition that really caught on, with the internet instantly lighting up with creative, hilarious and often NSFW concoctions. If you loved spending hours mixing and matching various elements to produce god knows what, then I can totally see why TOTK is likely your top game of 2023. But for me personally, it quickly became a chore and rarely ever approached being fun.
I also had a big problem with how linear this one felt to play with so many cutscenes and very specific actions needed to progress through the main quest. After so much freedom in Breath of the Wild, I felt narratively shackled nearly the entire time which led to many save/quits for quite a number of long stretches.
There were some definite highlights obviously, that first sky tower ascent was an absolute stunner of a sequence and one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had in a Zelda game. While the framerate performance stuttered a bit here and there, it certainly looked great and of course the music was fantastic. It’s just kind of a bummer that after spending something like 300 hours running around this map of Hyrule previously, more wasn’t done to alter the landscape. Adding sky islands was nice though not really all that much of a game changer and the underworld felt a bit lazy and a slog to wade through.
I still like Tears of the Kingdom and think it’s a good game, maybe even very good. But great, well not in the way that many Zelda games are great and certainly not iconic.
So put the pitchforks and torches away will ‘ya? This is about right.
