Tears of the Kingdom: My experience

 If you couldn't tell by now, Im a huge fan of The Legend of Zelda.  My first Zelda game was Breath of the Wild, and I have played numerous others too.  But right now Im playing Tears of the Kingdom, the newest 3D entry in the franchise.  The game so far is amazing and probably in my top 5 favourite games of all time.  In this blog entry I want to tell you about my experiences with the game so far and the amount of the story I have experienced too. 

The Great Sky Island

Before I begin, this blog post may contain spoilers for the story of Tears of the Kingdom, so please play the game for yourself if you want a spoiler free experience.  After the opening sequence, Link (our character) wakes up in a building somewhere in the sky.  When I first saw the Great Sky Island I knew that this game was going to be amazing.  In this game we have a new type of shrine, no longer Sheika shrines, but Zonai shrines.  This is my one problem with the game, it essentially erases all the Sheika stuff from Breath of the Wild and replaces all of it with Zonai.  But anyways, on the Great Sky Island we get told by the spirit of Rauru, the first ruler of Hyrule, that we need to complete 4 shrines before going into the Temple of Time.  So, I ventured out and went to each shrine and completed them, but I need to be honest, I did struggle with some of the ways to get to the shrines, because the whole Zonai master hand thing was completely new to me and I didn't have my trusty paraglider.  After completing them, I finished the tutorial and jumped off of the Great Sky Islands to the surface.  And let me tell you, seeing Hyrule again was such a cool experiece, because I haven't played Breath of the Wild for a while at this point.  Then, I headed to one of the games newer additions, Lookout Landing, to meet up with Purah and find out what happened to Zelda. 

Lookout Landing

After meeting Purah again, we can see that she changed quite a bit since Breath of the Wild.  For those unfamiliar, in Breath of the Wild Purah accidentally made herself into a child, because she was trying to make herself younger, because she was around 100 years old at that point.  But in Tears of the Kingdom, she found a way to age herself back up to a normal adult.  At Lookout Landing she tells Link about strange regional phenomenons that are happening in 4 regions, those being Gerudo desert, Tabantha, Zora's Domain and Death Mountain.  And with that, we finally started our "Divine Beasts" of Tears of the Kingdom.  That is another thing that rubbed me the wrong way, that they just completely removed the Divine Beasts that were a huge part of Breath of the Wild.  But anyways, let me first explain to you some more stuff about Lookout Landing.  It is located close to the ascended Hyrule Castle, and it is a place for Purah and her team to do research about the upheavel and the depths.  Here Link also finally gets his paraglider back.  There also is a small stall there where Link finds out about the coastal village of Lurelin that was taken over by a pirate ship full of monsters.  Right outside of Lookout Landing is a fallen piece of debris with a steward construct there that can help upgrade your energy cell, which can keep your Zonai devices running for longer.  For the sake of time, I will only write about two of my favourite regional phenomenons, those being the ones in Tabantha and Zora's domain. 

Zora's Domain

This was the first regional phenomenon I took on, and it was also one of my favourite ones, because of how positive our companion, Sidon, is.  Sidon is the prince of the Zora, a species compiled of fish people.  He is an old friend of Link, as he helped Link to defeat the Divine Beast and free his sisters soul in Breath of the Wild.  Anyways, I arrived in Zora's domain just to find out the king was gone and Sidon was helping to rule the Zora's while his father was healing from being wounded.  We also saw that the entire place was filled with this brown sludge.  Through different clues and puzzles, I finally reached the Water Temple and went in.  There, I had to use Sidon's ability to activate different water turbines to unleash the rest of the water back into Zora's Domain that cleaned away all the sludge.  But, after completing that we had to fight the temple's boss, a sludge covered octopus.  I'm going to be honest here, I really struggled with this fight.  But, eventually after dying probably around 10 times I defeated the boss.  Then, a cutscene played showing the Sage of Water, an ancestor of Sidon, explaining to him the powers he possesses and to help Link in his quest to defeat the Demon King Ganondorf.  After that, I got the Vow of Sidon, the Sage of Water, as a sign that he will help me defeat Ganondorf.  With that I can summon the spirit of Sidon anytime to help me in combat or to use his abilities.  When all was settled and done, King Dorephan appointed Sidon to be King of Zora's Domain. 

Tabatha region

Here I needed to go to Rito village, the place the Rito people lived.  They are bird-like people with wings they use to fly through the sky.  At the time of arriving there, it was colder than usual in the region as the whole village layed under a layer of snow.  There we met Tulin, the son of Teba (also an old rival turned friend of Link), who has the qualities to become a great warrior.  But, Tulin is still young and a bit inexperienced, so when he flew away in the snow, Teba asked Link to go find him.  After finding Tulin, Link and him fought off some monsters and after making it back, Teba feels more ready to send Tulin to solve the regional phenomenon with Link.  Now I need to be honest here, I struggled a lot to find my way to the Wind Temple.  For one, the floating ships started to confuse me after a while and another reason is that I wasn't quite prepared for the cold weather that high up in the snowy clouds.  But after a while of struggling I found my way to the Wind Temple and that is where the real struggle started.  You wouldn't believe me if I told you how long this Temple took me.  From the puzzles to having to keep going inside the temple to a fire to not die from the cold, it was a pain.  Eventually, after completing the mission of turning all the wind turbines, I had to fight one of the most fun boss fights I have ever done.  This temple's boss was Colgera, a flying insect-looking creature with icy circles I had to shoot arrows into.  I had so much fun fighting the boss, because of how fun Tears of the Kingdom's bow mechanic is.  After defeating the boss, the same type of cutscene played as the one with the Sage of Water, only this time it was an ancestor of Tulin.  Then Tulin also gave his Vow to Link that he will help him fight Ganondorf.  Rito village also started to get sunshine again and all the snow melted away.  

Side adventures 

Now I want to tell you about some of my favourite side adventures in the game.  Firstly, the whole Hudson and Rhondson adventure with helping their daughter spend time with them before she gets sent to Gerudo town for her training was super wholesome and seeing how Tarrey Town (that we helped to build in Breath of the Wild) was so cool to see.  I also really liked the whole Lurelin mission to take back the village from the monster pirates and also the repairing of the buildings and houses there.  Lastly, the whole presidential election saga in Hateno village was super fun to be apart of.  Most of the side adventures and quests in this game is so well planned and thought out.  This one isn't a side adventure as it is a main quest but I still want to write about it.  While exploring the depths for Josha, we find a strange temple of sorts where I finally unlocked the autobuild funtion.  But, the two other people there were actually Yiga clan members in disguise.  There I also had a boss battle against the Yiga clan leader Master Kohga, which was extremely fun.  

In conclusion

I am not even close to being done with this game.  I have spent around 60 hours already on this game and I feel like I can spend a 100 more.  Tears of the Kingdom is by far my favourite Zelda game ever, and I think no other may ever top it.  I absolutely love this game and I hope you will give it a try too.  Some day I might write a post about Breath of the Wild, who knows?  I hope you enjoyed reading this and if you did please follow as it will only help my blog reach more people.  Until next time, bye!