We have a great gameplay preview of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, courtesy of Zeltik.
Zeltik was one of several YouTubers who were invited to play part of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom by Nintendo of Europe. Zeltik got to play on the same Great Sky Island where Eiji Aonuma demonstrated some gameplay, and he also got to fight some Bokoblins back on the ground around Hyrule Field, as well as go back up to South Hyrule Sky Archipelago. No story spoilers here, but we will talk about the different gameplay elements that improves on The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild.
Great Sky Island is slightly smaller than the Great Plateau, but it’s more dense in points of interest, meaning, there are more things to do. Hyrule Field featured a Sheikah Tower, now overrun by Bokoblins and turned into one of their bases.
The first major improvement in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is in the UI. Abilities are now easily accessed via a wheel, and you will switch between UltraHand, Fuse, and Ascend frequently to get around. Traversal is now more complicated as you can’t just climb or swim to each sky island. However, this plays out as a puzzle that’s enjoyable to accomplish each time. Most of the time, Link will use Ultrahand to build flying and floating contraptions to get around, especially between the Sky Islands. Zeltrik also alludes to a special new ability that “streamlines the Ultrahand building process to make things more convenient, especially in sections of the game where you’ll need to build a lot.” That’s all we’re allowed to know about it for now.
UltraHand has some qualities of Magnesis – aside from building things, you can use it to quickly throw a barrel at an enemy, for example. The actual building is fully freeform, but like Magnesis, it may be tricky to learn how to move and assemble pieces at first.
Here’s the interesting part. Your valuable building blocks are Zonai technology – rockets, flamethrowers, fans, balloons, etc. They have their own spot in your inventory, and when you use them, they use batteries such as the Energy Cells Link wears on his hips. These Energy Cells have their own meter, and they will quickly charge up if they run out, but you’ll need to plan around them for transportation. You can add batteries to some of your vehicles.
The Zonai technology is collected in a specific way – defeating Constructs gives you Zonai Charges. You can then bring them to giant Zonai gachapon machines (Zeltik mistakenly thinks they’re pachinko). Put in one to five Zonai Charges, like coins, and several Zonai items will come out.
Aside from Ascend and Ultrahand, the Travel Medallion returns from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it works in exactly the same way.
The Fuse ability turns your inventory into a potent weapons cache. Attaching a Keese eyeball to an arrow makes it a seeker missile, attaching a Keese wing makes it hit distant targets. Utilizing the same physics ‘engine’ from its predecessor, you will want to guess and test what each item can do when you fuse it to something else.
Furthermore, every enemy drops a weapon item, that you can then Fuse to your weapon. However, you’ll want to be careful while experimenting – Zeltik and other previewers died because they were too close to the enemy when they hit an arrow with a wide AOE.
Recall feels like a powered up version of Stasis – instead of stopping a ball from falling down your head, you can send it back to where it came from. It has its obvious uses in combat, but will also be utilized in puzzles.
Ascend doesn’t have an analogue ability in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild¸ but it does to climbing what Fuse does to weapons. Interestingly, there is a time pause element to the ability. Time pauses when half your body pops up, giving you time to review your surroundings before you commit to going up. So you won’t be caught unaware by an enemy on top.
While some things have changed, some familiar elements from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild return. The Koroks have returned, with seeds to collect, and the combat system remains the same.
And then there’s the Portable Pot. This time, you can carry around a one-time use cooking pot to quickly prepare a recipe before you face a boss or enter a new area.
Truthfully, there aren’t that many The Legend of Zelda sequels that hew so closely to its original game. Even the NES’ The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, the very first sequel, changed things up radically from the original. Subsequently, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass made a lot of necessary changes in moving from Gamecube to DS with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will feel more like the transition from one Assassin’s Creed game to another; many familiar elements, but also a concerted effort to make everything feel different. But I dare say Nintendo made their sequel feel different in ways that you will feel in every minute of gameplay.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be released on May 12, 2023, exclusively on the Nintendo Switch. You can watch Zeltik’s twenty minute video below. I passed on a few details on this preview, so if you want to learn more, you can watch below.
