Is Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom worth your money?

by Ian McCormick

Staff writer

The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.

The first release of the Legend of Zelda series was in 1986 and today, 37 years later, the concept is still going strong. In fact, It’s doing so well that we recently got a sequel to Nintendo’s hit game “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” (BoTW). For those who don’t know, this was the series' first take on adding an open world aspect to an already fantastic game.

On that note, although I could very well write an entire article on BoTW alone, I’d much rather get into its new and improved sequel “Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” (TotK). So, whether the goal is to figure out which game is better, or if it’s worth throwing your hard earned money at, I’ll do my best to break it down and give you the need-to-know.

To get the best understanding of which game is better and which one you should buy for that matter, let's compare and contrast. Jumping right into it, which game has the superior story? Nicholas Wawrzyniak (11) says, “[Tears of the Kingdom’s] story was really good, I’d say it was better than Breath of the Wild’s.” However, Nicholas later adds, “The whole imprisoning war backstory was very annoying because after you get through defeating the bosses it gives you the same dialogue over and over.”

To that point I must agree; while the story was in depth and meticulously thought out, it was clear that an overwhelming amount of the script was just recycled from previous checkpoints in the story. While that fact is disappointing, I think the end goal was to really hammer in the importance of that dialogue in regards to the plot.

Next, the obligatory blade that seals the darkness, because you can’t talk about the Legend of Zelda without talking about the master sword. Specifically, which game gave you the better experience with the sword and in which game had the better plot device for tracking it down.

Sebastian Penaherrera (11) says, “It's better in ‘Tears of the Kingdom’ because you got a cool cut scene after you pulled [the sword] out.” In my opinion this is true; once you pull out the master sword, the scene that plays is a key detail to the story. This makes it all the better, whereas in “Breath of the Wild” it was flashy but nowhere near as satisfying.

Lastly, the Legend of Zelda has always been a puzzle game at heart, giving players different challenges that test their creative freedom. So the obvious question is, which game’s puzzles allow you more creativity?

History teacher Noor Alghussain adds, “I will say the puzzles in ‘Tears of the Kingdom’ were far better than the shrines and divine beasts in ‘Breath of the Wild’ just because each one felt unique in their own way.” This is a fair point as a good share of the shrines in “Breath of the Wild” felt repeated and unoriginal in a way “Tears of the Kingdom” managed to significantly improve on.

In the end, both games are masterpieces in their own regard. Though some may argue “Breath of The Wild” deserves more credit then its sequel as it laid the building blocks for this new style of Zelda game. Regardless of which one you like more though, “Tears of the Kingdom” has made an undeniably incredible improvement on its predecessor and definitely deserves to be given a shot. If you are in the market for a new gaming experience, I would one hundred percent give it a try.