After a long wait, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has finally hit store shelves. The game has been a fantastic treat for fans of the franchise, but the hardware it released on has definitely begun showing its age. While first-party titles like Pokemon Scarlet seem to be struggling on the aging hardware, Nintendo has played it very safe with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Aside from a few bugs and FPS drops, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom runs great on the six-year-old Nintendo Switch. The game is massive and has loads of brand-new features, but the console seldom falters under all that weight. It is impressive what Nintendo has been able to pull off on 2017 hardware in 2023, but it may have also held Tears of the Kingdom back to accomplish that.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Does Not Take Many Risks
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a very different game than Breath of the Wild, but it is also similar in some regards. Nintendo introduced a slew of new abilities to make this the sandbox to end all sandboxes, and it expanded Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Hyrule immensely to give players a massive playground to run wild in. Players also embark on a brand-new adventure, but everything else about it feels exactly the same.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom looks practically identical to Breath of the Wild. While there may have been some graphical tweaks, the games look the same in a side-by-side comparison. The studio did not try to do anything particularly different with the look and feel of Hyrule. Instead, it seems to have just updated Zelda: Breath of the Wild's graphics slightly and, basically, crafted a brand-new story around it.
The graphics of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdoms is not the only thing that played it safe as the world is the same too. Nintendo took Zelda: Breath of the Wild's map and gave it a few tweaks for Tears of the Kingdom. It did expand with the addition of a sky and underground map, but the rest of the open world is the same. It is just as impressive today as it was in 2017, and the additional locales make it feel even grander, but this sameness may also turn some players off.
While the various abilities in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are different from the Sheikah Slate runes in Breath of the Wild, the rest of the gameplay has not changed and fans know just what to expect when they boot up the new title. The menus are the same, combat has not changed much, the same music cues fill the world, and even cooking has not been updated. Direct sequels tend to have similar gameplay styles, but it feels too similar here sometimes.
The Nintendo Switch has been on the market for over six years, and it has begun showing cracks. Nintendo can only do so much with the aging hardware, and that is likely why Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom feels so much like its predecessor. Nintendo was not able to take major risks with the formula, and instead had to craft something that it knew would work on the Switch.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are fantastic games and great system sellers for Nintendo. However, it would have been nice to see Tears of the Kingdom launch on a next-gen console. That would have allowed Nintendo to innovate upon Breath of the Wild's formula immensely, but it had to play within the confines of the Switch instead. Hopefully, the next chapter will not have to deal with those same constraints.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on Switch.
