The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

This game is amazing 

Game no: 507
Genre: Adventure 
Platform: Nintendo Switch 
Release Date: 2023 

Ok my last game played was around 50 days ago so my review is going to be a bit rusty. But during that time I played only one game everyday for a couple of hours without fail. That game is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (ToTK). 6 years ago when Nintendo release Breath of the Wild it was one of the best games I've played that year. Granted it did made the top 10 (Number 5) but it wasn't the best game of the year. I still enjoyed it immensely. Now with the sequel, I thought there is no way I could enjoy this game more. Man, I love to be proven wrong 

This game is a continuation of the first game where you Link and Zelda explore the caverns underneath Hyrule castle and awaken a new evil and with that you are trust into the adventure of your lifetime. Typical Zelda fashion you have no weapons, all your heart containers are gone and basically they strip you out and it is up to you to go explore. The starting stage which is the sky island provide a good tutorial for you to discover you new abilities to start you adventure. Gone are the old abilities of bombs and platforms and now we have 4 new abilities which is recall where you rewind some item for 30 seconds. Ascend where you go up if there is a surface to go up to (Good for exploring caves). Fuse, where you take an item and combine it with you weapon and shield which give s you
higher stats and finally the main ability which you will use 70% of the game and practically can brake the game if you know how is Ultrahand. What makes this game different is the Ultrahand ability where you can combine items to make a device or structure such as a boat, or a bridge to name a few. Complimenting the Ultrahand is items called Zonai devices. These devices which are dispense in capsule form will help you design items such as cars, planes, boats and weapons. Basically the possibilities are just limited from you imagination. If you can think it, you probably can design it. There is a lot of YouTube clips showing players design crazy contraptions such as drones, tanks and robots.

Once you leave the sky island and fall down from the sky to the ground. You are free to do whatever you want. There are main objectives in the game but the game won't rush you to complete them. It is up to you to do it in your own pace. For me every open world game I have a way of playing it. First, find all the map towers to unlock the map. Once you know where everything is you can start your journey. The thing with the game that it rewards you for just going one direction. Let say you want to explore something and then suddenly you see a shrine in the horizon so you will stop what you'll doing and head there but along the way you see a cave that you want to explore. So you'll put a pin in the shrine and go to the cave. The choices of what to do is just endless and it is not bound
on a straight a clear path. So after I unlock the map, I will spend my time just wondering around finding shrines. Shrines are use to upgrade your hearts or stamina. In this game you are going to need stamina because there are a lot of things that is going to need climbing, swimming or gliding and most of the time you end up dying because the lack there of stamina. Hearts in this game is an after thought since even though there are 40 hearts in the game. If you don't have at least 20 you are better of running to safe distance or using your Zonai devices to kill them since this game is punshing. One hit and usually it will be game over 

So returning besides the Shrines are they weapons degradation. Everything breaks after time(even the Master Sword but that is more of a cooldown). Cooking which this time gives you bonus stats if you cook them correctly. Gear that will help against the elements and lot of lots of things to collect. What is different this time is the amount of things you can explore. Besides the sky island which you need make a flying device and have enough battery to fly up there (which you get by mining) and the ground the explore. There is also a new area call the depths. These are holes scattered through out Hyrule and when you fall down it will be a pitch black worth of nothing. Literally you can't see anything until you light it up with a bulb plant of find one of hundreds of lightroots. These lightroots will illuminate the area which will make exploring easy 

So lets get to my review why I say this is the best game I've played this year. The main reason is because of the hacks I guess. The version that I am playing of the game has the ability to multiply items
by just doing a couple of steps. I don't say this game is not enjoyable without hacks but once you unlocked unlimited inventory in the game. This game just opens up. You can spawn multiple resources to get your battery charge up. Truffles to get full health with extra hearts when cooked 5 at a time. Unlimited amount of money from selling cooked meat or anything else you find. Basically this game skips the mundane stuff of having to mine or gather resource. I've got enough resource to just auto build a sky bike and just roam around the depths for days opening all light roots. I cooked a lot of truffles to help me beat Ganon at the end since it gives me extra hearts. Basically if they gave the players unlimited resources you can practically enjoy the game. Not to say the game is broken with these hacks since you have to still play the game properly to unlock the full story. But it so fun having not to worry about it. The only thing that I can't multiply is bombs and arrows. Those I need to find or buy them in the wild.

In the end I spend more than 230 hours in this game. I did all I need to do. Did all the main quests and completed 80% of the side quest. I manage to finish 134 out of the 152 shrines and after getting the end credits I am content. I played one of the best games ever made and I don't think that Nintendo can make something special like this again. This game deserve the S Rank and also a top 3 spot in my game of the year. Will it be number 1, wait and see.