Review | The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom totally upends everything we know about the series
- A Nintendo Switch exclusive, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom introduces a fun new major feature – crafting – which encourages players’ creativity
- The game doesn’t wait for us to solve a problem or best an enemy. It simply gives us a world, and then tells us to go forth and play
It starts with an archaeological mission. Princess Zelda, all braided golden hair and enchanting oval eyes, is a leader and a scholar. She’s directing Link, the voiceless video game hero who has come to her rescue many a time since the mid-1980s, to follow her lead and walk in the shadow of her torch as she guides them down into the caverns beneath a medieval castle.
These tunnels, Zelda tells us, have long been forbidden, forever off limits even to royalty such as her.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am,” Zelda exclaims, before pulling out a smartphone-like device to snap photos of ancient hieroglyphics believed to depict the founding of the kingdom of Hyrule.
But these catacombs are home to more than Zelda lore. This patient, cinematic beginning is building a mystery, giving us glimpses of Link’s magical Master Sword but never letting us attack with it.
We hear of an advanced and ancient sky civilisation, a great war and a demon king, and we know, partly because a new Zelda game arrives every few years and partly because of the ominous, stark soundtrack – a chilling sound that seems fashioned out of whooshing weapons – that history is about to repeat itself.
And yet The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the most anticipated game of the year, is not a game of familiarity.
