Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Celebrates First Anniversary With Special Artwork

Very beautiful artwork. İ have still not beat it this game but İ love this game and the open world Zelda game like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the wild, İ have no problem.

Loved TotK. How they built on BotW and made an equally great if not greater experience is an incredible achievement to me. My favourite moments was finding all the tears and watching the cut scenes unfold. Finding the mastersword gave me goosebumps.

I still have the Collector's Edition Sealed in my room and have been looking for time to spend with the game. Unicorn overlord is still consuming my big game time now... 😅

When I traded it in. Absolutely horrific sequel that took a shameful amount of time to make.

I'm still playing it now. Had a couple of months off at the end of last year, but it's been in my playing list for the full year. Still need to find 3 shrines. 280 hours down. I can't believe some people really just blitzed the story in first month and then put it down for good.

My favourite memory’s got to be diving into the eye of the Hebra storm, somehow I figured it out without a guide and I felt like an absolute genius in the moment. Such a special feeling

Happy anniversary Tears Of The Kingdom! I had such a great time and many great moments. The saving Zelda moment was incredibly awesome! A great idea to make it playable and not just a cutscene. It reminded me, of one of my favourite moments in Link's Awakening, when you are saving Marin with the grapple hook.

I remember playing hero with the kids in Hateno and going on a patrol with them, to keep the village safe. The family moments in Tarrey Town. Gerudo Town, which reminded me of Terranigma. The first visits to the depths. And many more.

I am so much looking forward to the next Zelda.

My best memories from the game are the cutscenes, not much the gameplay. After 6 years or so of development I think it was a huge missed oportunity not making an entire new map. I mean I get it, you can now 'do this and do that' but at least for me one of the biggest enjoyments from BotW was the exploration. With TotK knowing exactly that behind a certain hill you will find the same river, town, woods, etc took a lot of what make a zelda game special and I'm sorry; adding some sky island or dark (and mostly plain) underworld just didn't cut it for me.

Just image the same gameplay of TotK but within an entire new an unexplored world. Now that would have been just perfect.

The first time you jump from the sky through a chasm into the depths.

I had a brilliant time with this game, spent longer in it than BOTW and took a ridiculous amount of screenshots. Seeing Rito Village covered in snow and all the little Rito girls helping out while the adults were hunting for food was a touching moment, my first experience with low gravity blew me away, with that sky music in the background, the first time you go into the depths and hear that sub bass growl...and the ending? One of the best game endings I've ever seen.

I enjoyed just stopping and chilling at places a lot too, those sunsets in the sky were so calming...

For me, it would be towards the end of the tutorial/first sky island. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t ever fast travel.

There comes a point during the tutorial when you are expected to fast travel back to an earlier location, which is floating high above you. Instead of doing that, I spent over an hour trying to balance on a ‘platform’ made of Zonai fans in a bid to ascend. I managed to do it, but only just, and ended up having to jump off the platform mid flight and climb up from the bottom of the mini island. Felt so good to achieve it!

I later gave up the “no fast travel” restriction as I falsely believed that it was necessary to do so to return above ground. Now I know otherwise, I will start it all over again! No fast travelling!

I remember being surprised that the dragon flying above me was entirely different from the previous three, and then realizing the sad truth of who the dragon was after I finally managed to climb onto it.

My favourite memories of Tears of the Kingdom are Tulin's quests and the Rito legend. As well as the final fight and the end of the story.

Aside from those, I loved seeing the improvements in storytelling and character development in these last Zelda games (including Age of Calamity).

Oh yeah, and the artwork is gorgeous, depicting one of my favourite moments of all. This was just so beautiful.

“Zelda”’s turn. The whole time after she first reappeared, I was giving her some serious side-eye. Not so much heel as full-on yandere.

Best moment was when I started playing it with my girlfriend on call, both playing at our own pace.

The more I played, the less I enjoyed almost all aspects of the game, bu that beginning and the hype I felt was still magical.

Amazing game! A year and I haven’t even explored the whole map. The whole crafting mechanic is not my cup pf tea. But a masterpiece nevertheless

@Franc001 Couldn't agree more. I really missed the sense of exploration, especially when I figured out exploring the nooks and crannies of 'The Depths' was not worth anything.

I really tried to like it, but it never came close to BotW.

just a damn shame no DLC

The story with Zelda had my heart hurting. Some of those Dragon Tears - wow, to play so many Legend of Zelda games and one of the pivotal characters you’ve grown up with makes a decision like that - it still gets me.

The pure excitement of wondering what happened to my favorite character was what my hype for the game focused on. As soon as I got off the Great Sky Island, I resolved to sprint to figure out what happened with Yunobo. To avoid spoilers, let me just say that this part of the game was crazy for me. Happy one year anniversary Tears of the Kingdom and Yunobo’s third game!

@Sciqueen Absolutely horrific comment that I spend a shameful amount of time reading.

My favorite moment in the game was the first gloom hand encounter

@FawfulsFury Yeah, I first encountered one in a cave and had a total "WTF!?" moment. Then when I managed to defeat it, it just casually morphs into Phantom Ganon? Freaked me out, it was great.

How many great memories I have with this game?Playing it all night long, one year ago, I stayed up until 5AM. Failing funnily enough on my first "vehicles" production, going down to the Depths for the first time, that gave me chills down my spine. The same with picking up the Master Sword from dragon Zelda's head, that was epic as hell. When I found my first Phantom Ganon on the Castle prison, that was a "son of a b*tch, you're still alive!" thing, it was AWESOME and TERRIFYING. Then, witnessing the final Tear memory, that put a literal tear to my eye, and the final boss battle, the moment Ganondorf transformed and his life bar exceeded the limits of the screen, and the music from the OoT Ganondorf battle kicked in, I felt like I was 8 years old again, no other time has this happened in my life. My favorite moment thou, was when I helped the Tarry Town mayor's daughter with her departure to the Gerudo land, I cried then, picturing doing the same thing with my own daughter, some day. My favorite Zelda game, that's what Tears of the Kingdom is to me now.

I have a bit of a complicated relationship with TOTK. Overall, it was amazing and improved on pretty much aspect of BOTW, which is no mean feat, but reusing the same Hyrule just with new mechanics and lacklustre new areas made it feel like a do-over rather than a true sequel.

Some highlights that spring to mind are the Great Sky Island (I wanted so much more of that), the Stormwind Ark (fusing an icicle to a broken lever to be able to move it was such a satisfying puzzle mechanic), the Lightning Temple (great use of the recall ability for the light puzzles) and (spoiler warning) the final battle, both Ganondorf using the parry against me and then the sheer scope of the Demon Dragon showdown.

There’s always a lighthouse.

Opinions of this game inherently invite comparison to its direct predecessor, and while TOTK may be technically superior to the last game, containing essentially everything it had and more, not to mention being largely darker in tone (which many people count as a plus), I still have a soft spot for, and have to give the edge in enjoyability to, BOTW.

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly a solid game and I had fun with it, but it just didn't grip me with the same level of novelty and desire to explore as Wild did. And I wasn't on the "this is just BOTW DLC" bandwagon at all. In fact, most of the fun I had was back on the surface again, rather than the sky islands, which felt rather sparse and repetitive beyond the tutorial group and one or two other areas, or the depths, which didn't do much for me at all beside put me in a dour mood (maybe the point, but not much fun to me). But the surface definitely did feel like a map created for another game that was just slightly remixed for another iteration of the same routine. I experienced several instances of "This is where such and such was, but now it just feels oddly empty and out of place," or "That's a strange spot for that shrine or tower; it ought to be over there where that spot clearly designated for a shrine or tower is." And I had little interest in repeating the same grind to farm mostly the same materials, in addition to new ones, in order to acquire and upgrade mostly the same armor all over again (had no hesitation making use of the dupe glitch), or in finding every collectable, or in stopping frequently to soak up the beautiful vistas, or in exploring every nook and cranny of the map, as I did with the last game. At one point, I even had to take a few months break from playing, as I got burnt out with a feeling of sameness about half way through the game.

For my money, I suppose what might've made me enjoy it more is if they'd scrapped the depths altogether, spent that time further updating the surface and sky, and changed up the gameplay loop a bit more, since it essentially is just BOTW in new clothes, with a few added bells and whistles. But sometimes less is more, and I personally don't find it superior. I certainly wouldn't call Wild the beta test for this game. I'd sooner call Tears a rehash.

Summed up, if I call BOTW a 10/10, I'd probably rate TOTK a 7 or 8. By no means bad, just not the same level of spectacle that the former was. Not for me, anyway. Maybe if I hadn't maxed out my time with BOTW, or if Tears was my first foray into this particular world, I'd feel differently.

Man nothing can beat that first drop out of the tutorial cave... That was an incredible moment last year...

I had spent years willingly avoiding any info, any video, any teaser. I'm so glad I did it. I knew nothing. The memory of the music, the yellow leaves. Only TOTK could make me feel that. Then I got scared that the game wouldn't surprise me on the ground because I totally knew BOTW, but no, they somehow managed to revamp everything, expand, and add two layers. When I see what how much they've put in 16GB... I'm speechless. I had a 150h run to beat the game comfortably. I started another 300h run to 100% it.

My favorite memories are the real Zeldas that came before this game.

The journey of finding the tears was heartbreaking. I cried a bucket by the time I finished. I have never hated Ganon more…I have never loved Princess Zelda more. If they never make a Zelda game that focuses on Zelda again, I am so glad I got to experience this trilogy (BOTW, AOC, TOTK).

@Ryu_Niiyama you have got to play through Age of Calamity!! I had tears in my eyes many times throughout TotK's cutscenes. But AoC did get me crying at the end.

@FawfulsFury Careful you don't cut yourself with that razor sharp wit

@Sciqueen So edgy 🙄

@Antraxx777 it's edgy to have an opinion after being let down by Nintendo? OK

@imagazelle I call both of them 10/10 and they both serve as my favorite games of all time

after having a year to let it sit with me, i can easily put my complaints aside to say that omg this game is really good

Holy crap this artwork is beautiful!!!😍

@Sciqueen i was there with you for a bit last year, but i dunno man. Its worth giving games second and even third chances, cause even though the game doesnt change, YOU do. Im not saying youd like it, but ik how easy it is to get stuck in a clear-cut mental groove of how "I hate this one game and there aint no way to talk me out of it". I used to hate sonic colors, but i gave myself enough time to sit with it and i grew to quite like it! I used to think that i hated jrpgs and anime games in general, but ive grown into a pretty big persona and fire emblem fan over the years. I suppose my point is that its worth giving games, and pretty much anything in life in general, a second look, even after youve made an initial judgement call.

@Yalloo ? I have played AoC, that was why I called it a trilogy. But I will edit my comment for clarity.

Probably my best memory with the game was the time I realized I could actually control the plane myself, back in the Death Mountain (my second dungeon). Wow, that boss was just IMPRESSIVE! And then you go down the volcano... Just wow.
Also another moment was the first time I found a place with little gravity, in the Zora region. I couldn't believe it! And the bubbles moving around...
Not to mention the boss in the Hebra region, with that music...
Oh man! What a fantastic experience, I couldn't put the pad down, literally. One of the best games I have ever played.

PS: Wow, how could I forget the time I saw the last memory?? Man, I still feel goosebumps.

@Ryu_Niiyama oh sorry, my bad, I must have read too quickly. You meant over all three games. I cannot agree more indeed!

@epicgamner No, I'm pretty confident in my verdict after spending many hours with the game. It's a lazy sequel and it's clear the team sat on their hands for most of the development time. Aounuma has to go.

I love the artwork from this game. Nintendo nailed the cel-shading in BOTW and I'm so glad it carried over to TOTK. It's a perfect blend between Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword was too awkward looking.

@Sciqueen I’m with you in that I didn’t like TotK as much as BotW on first playthrough. The magic of that game is exploring Hyrule for the first time, and that magic is lost when it’s reusing the same overworld. But I don't act like my opinion is an objective fact, representative of the whole Zelda community, and call the team that spent years developing the game and its crazy complex physics mechanics “lazy.” It’s overly reductive, unhelpful to the conversation about what direction the series should go in, and just makes you sound like an *****.

And for the record, I too would appreciate more linearity in the series, but I’m not stating my opinion as a fact here.

Man, the artwork for both BOTW and TOTK is just 🤌

Favorite memories of TOTK:

• The entire Colgera boss battle, mostly because of the music.
• Encountering Colgera again by complete surprise in the Depths.
• Exploring the cave inside the Lookout Landing emergency shelter only to realize that the cave was absolutely gigantic and stretched all the way to Hyrule Castle.
• The Construct Factory + Spirit Temple combo, it was probably favorite dungeon and I hope future Zelda dungeons have a similar design and structure to this one.
• The entire final boss battle and ending sequence.

@Sciqueen If spending 6 years rebuilding and retooling the entire map for BOTW in a new game engine with new areas, secrets, vertical layers to the world, whilst integrating complex physics and chemistry based marvels of object interactions that other game devs can only describe as “magic” (and they got it to look and run this well on Switch) is “lazy”… then Oxford clearly need to redefine what the term means in the dictionary 🤣

Fair play if it wasn’t your personal cup of tea however.

@Sciqueen did you like botw or is this new gameplay style just not your cup of tea in general

Really wish there would've been some DLC, we got a lot of cool back story and character development on the last game through DLC (and in a way, Hyrule Warriors). This world was so huge and expanded, I was a little let down when I learned we weren't going to get to explore any more of it.

I have to admit, second stage ganon power bar was epic.

The journey of the master sword was some great storytelling. However, the rest of the story was a bit of a letdown, and it’s still a little jarring if you try to join the BOTW and TOTK stories any more than superficially.

TOTK is a great game, I can’t deny it, it’s just such a shame that BOTW came before it as it is just a bit better.

@westman98 That cave! When I first went down there and opened it all up I was wondering when it was going to end, it just goes on forever!

There was another cave as well I liked, I call The Gauntlet - near Hateno Village. It was just one big fight from one side to the other and I was pretty underpowered when I did it...

@amongtheworms one of my minor disappointments was flying a contraption to the ceiling in the depths and not being able to ascend out. But TOTK is my number 1 game of all time.

Why does this give off skyward sword vibes?
Maybe because link is reaching for Zelda like he did in SS

I totally ignored going to Lookout Landing (I actually thought they removed the paraglider, for a few days...), and then I stumbled upon a random Well that led to the Depths. It was honestly, literally one of the few times my jaw has been blown open. Once I realized there was a whole "dark world", any reservations I had about TOTK being in the same world disappeared

@WiltonRoots
I think you are referring to the Walnot Mountain cave, I enjoyed spelunking through that as well.

I think Nintendo did a great job with caves in general given how large and labyrinthine many of them were. To me it was fun to enter a cave just to see where or how it would end.

Beyond caves, another fond memory was completing one of the labyrinths for the first time. Navigating the surface labyrinth, then making my way up to glide across the sky labyrinth in low-gravity, and then diving from the sky all the way down into the Depths to fight the Construct boss was such a genius way to integrate all 3 layers of the world map across a single objective.

Oh, and before that, I went to Kakariko, and everyone was like "ooh theres this big scary chasm, stay away", so it was super scary when I eventually fell in one of the gloom holes

There's this side Quest where you have to actually explore the ocean a bit and use the fuse power in a smart way. Really loved that feeling! 🤎

And of course that windtempel, if the next game could be more like that! 🤎🤎🤎

@westman98 Yeah, the Lomei side quests were brilliant. The rewards at the end didn't really interest me, tbh, but that makes these quests a perfect example of the journey being more important than the destination. I would say that whole notion encapsulates the main TOTK experience more than anything else.

I have not finished the game yet , but my favourite part of the game yet is village side quests ,IF i have to pick i'd choose Lureli village with its pirates .

@Sciqueen Aonuma is a pillar within Nintendo's old guard. He is an invaluable source of wisdom and guidance for the younger Nintendo devs, and he will never be pushed out because of a few silly haters on the internet who disingenuously belittle the extremely hard work that the Zelda team put themselves through.

@MonadoBoy Fact: they recycled the map the assets the gameplay mechanics. The sky and depths maps were empty and repetitive. I wouldn't have minded if they used the same Hyrule map but added plenty of new towns villages etc but all they made was the HQ in front of Hyrule Castle. The building mechanic was a gimmick that got old fast and don't get me started on the story

@Ulysses He's a great game maker but a terrible director. He had his shot now its someone's else's turn

@epicgamner I liked botw. Thought it got repetitive and needed more lore and better rewards for exploring but it felt like an epic adventure. Totk was, well now you can play through botw with minor changes. It made it stale and tedious

@Sonicka the building was a gimmick that got old fast. The sky is just some scattered floating islands except for thunderhead. The depths seemed cool at first but it was all one big biome that got tedious to travel through. The controls especially in battle are terrible. You say they retooled botw but they didn't improve a basic gameplay mechanic. All in all it wasn't worth the wait

@RupeeClock Wait, YouTube has a community post feature? How have I not known about this?

@Sciqueen fair do - each to their own.

When I look at this in terms of world content:

• Sky Islands - I think a lot of us have forgotten how many unique islets there actually are beyond the two larger playgrounds of The Great Sky Island and Dragonhead. I can off the top of my head think of a good 2-3 dozen unique locations in the game. A good comparison to draw here would be The Wind Waker. Consider that game that 42 unique islands, most of which can be considered small mounds and some broader locations that lead to dungeons. TOTK has the same (if not possibly more) areas in the sky alone than this entire game provides over the great sea.
• The Depths - I mean, mileage will vary with this for sure. I was hoping there would be more to do here personally but I enjoyed what this was (a large farming location for Zonite), but I found the gameplay loop of farming amongst treasure hunting and doing missions or quests (or main quests) down here really quite addictive. In addition this gameplay loop means you get to spend more time in the sky / with vehicles if have more power batteries made and saved. But I really liked that they mirrored the above world below and inverted the topography. It made exploring quite a unique experience in trying to figure out how to get from A - B by using multiple layers of the map whilst in the depths. And lets not forget the Dark and light-bloom mechanic. Brilliant Risk/Reward stuff coming down into the dark. Really made going down to the depths feel very dangerous.
• Main Overworld. It was BOTW’s map… but it also wasn’t. The remixed landscapes, 150+ unearthed caves and hidden tunnels and crevices throughout Hyrule just made this land feel richer and denser to explore to me. So much was new to uncover amongst familiar looking terrain that I got lost in areas I thought I knew from BOTW. But I mainly just enjoyed that we got to play in a world that we’d saved previously. As a sequel I was happy that the NPC’s at least recognised link, his feats and who is was, and referenced BOTW throughout the adventure. Continuity is on point (except for the lazy Shiekah tech disappearance post calamity).
• Ultrahand - I can found the crafting / fusion / building mechanic to be what gives this game its creative longevity. I’m not particularly amazing at it, but there have been some frankly incredible things built if you look at the Hyrule Engineers subreddit, some of the creations working using the in game chemistry engine have to be seen to be believed.

When it comes to battling - I agree that this is a weak spot. I personally like the considered approach from a distance, but not when link goes in to melee. I much prefer the fast paced button mash / dash / dodge approach of Hyrule Warriors to link's combat skills in BOTW/TOTK.

Admittedly as much as I could go back to this Hyrule again, I would like a new Kingdom / new area entirely for their next game to roam endlessly.

But the new content in TOTK easily doubles that of BOTW's, so I really don't think the team rested on their laurels for 6 years by refining, experimenting, and handing the players their development tools (Ultrahand, Ascend) gave us the greatest traversal gameplay tools this series has ever seen.

My best memories was creating the world's largest, dodgiest one wheel car that was borderline impossible to steer but could even cross rivers!

@Sciqueen interesting! I can definentely understand where youre coming from and me from 6 months ago would have been right there with you. Honestly, i think the thing that hurt this game the most was covid. If the game took a year or two less to make, it would have been a lot easier to accept totk for what it is, at least for me. And idk if i agree with the lazy argument, except in the reusage of old tracks department. Too many songs are reused, remixes for the town themes would have gone a long way to signify their growth and how theyve changed in big and small ways over the years