The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, by all accounts, is one of the greatest video games of all time. Revolutionizing the open-world genre back when it launched in 2017, Breath of the Wild was much more than just an excellent Zelda or Nintendo game, and its legacy can still be felt all these years later, still influencing a wide range of modern titles. But Breath of the Wild wasn't perfect, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom goes out of its way to make up for that.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a phenomenal open-world action-adventure game, but it had a good handful of issues, albeit not ones that significantly detracted from all its greatness. One of Breath of the Wild's most divisive elements was its weapon durability system, and thankfully, one Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ability goes a long way in fixing that completely.
How Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Fuse Ability Fixes Breath of the Wild's Durability Problem
For many fans, Zelda: Breath of the Wild's weapon durability mechanic greatly hampered their enjoyment of the game. In Breath of the Wild, the player's weapon will degrade over time, and eventually break. Better weapons will often have increased durability, and thus last a bit longer, but every weapon aside from the Master Sword will inevitably break completely.
On one hand, weapon durability is a natural mechanic to add to Breath of the Wild. As the first truly open-world Zelda game, Nintendo wanted to really emphasize the series' adventure roots with Breath of the Wild, and the vast majority of its gameplay mechanics and systems are built with that goal in mind. Weapon durability is no different, as it is used to encourage the player to experiment with all of the game's different weapon types.
However, while this system does certainly succeed at encouraging players to explore new weapons, that feeling of exploration eventually fades. After 60+ hours with Breath of the Wild, many players have already experimented with every weapon type in the game, and they know which ones are their favorite. But rather than just let them use those, Breath of the Wild's weapon durability system constantly forces them to pick up whatever they can find, leading to some real frustration for long-time players.
Rather than remove this controversial feature, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom keeps it, but one of its new mechanics goes a long way in negating its downsides. Even more so than its predecessor, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom revolves around player-freedom and creativity, and the new abilities Ultrahand and Fuse are the epitome of this ethos. While Ultrahand gives the player the ability to join together practically any object in the environment, Fuse lets players stick an object or weapon to their weapon or shield.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Fuse ability goes a very long way in fixing Breath of the Wild's weapon durability issue. Rather than being forced to just pick up a lower-level weapon from the ground when their favorite equipped weapon breaks, players can now forge their own weapons by fusing together a vast range of materials. This adds countless new weapons to the game, and makes each new combination feel like a rewarding discovery. While some players will still find it frustrating whenever their weapon breaks, Tears of the Kingdom's Fuse ability does finally offer enough experimentation with its weapons to justify the weapon durability mechanic's existence.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on Switch.
