Everything we didn’t like in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

No game is perfect, but Tears of the Kingdom certainly comes close

Much has been said, and much more will likely be said in the coming years, about why The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an incredible game. We think so, too — we just hit 90 hours of gameplay over the weekend, and as you might be able to tell in our extensive Tears of the Kingdom coverage, we can't get enough of it.

That said, no game is perfect, and it can be fun to find something wrong with a project that borders on perfection. Tears of the Kingdom really has no right being so big and detailed — where 90 percent of publishers would have been content to explore Hyrule with the first chapter, the skies in the second, and the underground in the third, instead Nintendo has done it all together passionately in one fell swoop.

It almost makes you worry about the chances of there being a sequel (of course there will be, The Legend of Zelda will never go away, it always ends up coming back), given this entry in the series has so many ideas, and curates each one with such precision and artistry. And yet, at the threshold of 100 hours of a game we have no intention of finishing anytime soon, there are some small things that got on our nerves, some improvements to be made in the future that would turn a near-flawless game into a perfect one.

Against a background of such beauty, one might think that drawing up a list of things that don't work in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom would be quite difficult. But, in the context of a game to which the vast majority of things succeed divinely, those that go wrong are felt at a superficial level. These are small nitpicks and little else, and it’s important to keep that in mind with everything we say here.

With that said, here’s everything we didn’t like about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Rotating with Ultrahand

The new abilities open up so many more possibilities compared to Breath of the Wild, and in most cases they work great. Ultrahand is a rather tricky case, however, because it literally allows you to shape objects around you at will in a three-dimensional space.

And just rotating an object is not always intuitive: often simply straightening a plate before connecting it to something requires resetting its original position several times or dropping it on a regular plane, and this can be a bit frustrating or even limiting at times.

Map markers

We are big fans of games that allow you to "doodle" on the map, adding markers and counters left and right, and like in Breath of the Wild, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom does this very well. The only catch: there aren’t enough map markers – the ones you can see in augmented reality style in front of you with the scope. Just a couple more would stop us from having to remove some from time to time, and would go a long way. 

The scope

Speaking of the scope: have you noticed that it is not possible to adjust the zoom with the scope? Sometimes the shot is too close, and other times it’s too far away. We would have preferred to be able to zoom in and out as we please, especially since the Camera app in the Purah Pad does have zoom. Calling up the camera requires an extra step in opening up the skill wheel though, while for the scope you only need to press on the right analog stick.

Automatic scrolling

In longer games, especially in genres like JRPGs and visual novels, it’s fairly common practice to have the option of enabling automatic scrolling in dialogue: a character finishes their written sentence (typically, minor conversations are not dubbed) and, after giving you a few seconds to read it all, moves on to the next one. In Zelda Tears of the Kingdom this feature is largely absent and after more than a few trips around its open world, it can get tiring.

Sages don't do what they should

Here we enter the territory of some slightly more serious criticism. As you progress through the main quest, you can add Sages to your roster for a huge helping hand in battle and exploration. With 3-4 in the vicinity, however, the game can get a little frustrating: you end up activating a power, for example, when you want to pick up an item with the A, and sometimes blow the item off the edge of a cliff (we won’t forgive you, Tulin).

Other times we had to chase them around the battlefield, dodging attacks left and right, to activate one of their powers, when they kept moving instead. There is a workaround here, too, as you can turn off Sage spirits at will, but we never did it for fear of missing out on something — real help in fights, because they give it, or that extra help getting around the map.

Fetch quests

If we had to mention one thing that we really liked in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it would be the world of Hyrule and the way it is constantly able to grab your attention with interesting detours. It's not like in other open worlds, where you're constantly distracted by other tasks and end up frustrated by the often irrelevant nature of those tasks — here everything that calls to you is worth doing, whether it gives you an actual reward, or the satisfaction of completing a difficult challenge or seeing a cool cutscene play out.

Tears of the Kingdom has the DNA of immersive sims at its core, as you can always choose from a range of approaches that seem to break the game (they don't really do that: the game is meant to be enjoyed that way) — but also in the evolution of its world, whether it's a newspaper about your most recent exploits or trivially the influence of the day/night cycle on character routines.

One thing missing from the more role-playing-oriented immersive sims is the ability to determine the outcome of a quest, but that's perhaps a story for another day. Instead, we want to point out that a bunch of the side quests are nothing more than basic fetch quests, in which you collect objects and return them to their destination or repeat the same task over and over again. The design of these side quests is thankfully a fairly contained problem but one that, in a game that is otherwise excellent, sticks out a bit.

The controls

Finally, the controls. We noticed this very early on, but Nintendo knew it had a very elaborate controls layout, full of different options and inputs to memorize, but also not very intuitive for those coming from other open worlds – or from those who played Breath of the Wild at launch. Even after 90 hours of play, it’s hard to shake the feeling. The way the starting controls are arranged, for example, it’s almost impossible to run (B) and jump (X) together, or worse to run, jump, and close the mini-combo with a jump attack (Y).

This is probably intentional – in a title of unbridled freedoms, it's a way to keep certain behaviors at bay that, yes, could have broken up the intended flow of combat and exploration – but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

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For Zelda guides and tips, like how to find and activate all Skyview Towers, or an explanation of all Zonai Devices, make sure to read our full Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom walkthrough.