: review on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2

The same world, but not the same journey

Revisiting familiar places was one of the parts I liked most. At first it is natural to try to remember how a certain region worked before. But the game uses exactly that memory against you. Villages face new problems, characters have moved on with their lives and entire regions have been affected by unexpected phenomena. There is none of that feeling that everyone stayed frozen waiting for Link to come back.

Some characters return more mature and with different responsibilities. This is especially noticeable among those who had already helped Link in Breath of the Wild. Instead of serving only as secondary figures tied to the old Champions, they now take on much more active roles. Their relationship with Link also gains an interesting layer, because there is history between them. You are not meeting everyone for the first time. There is a familiarity the game doesn’t always need to explain with long dialogues.

The narrative still uses a very free structure, so it is perfectly possible to find important parts of the story in a different order than intended. That offers freedom, but it also creates a problem: certain revelations can appear before other scenes that still treat that information as a mystery. It is a price Tears of the Kingdom pays for letting the player go in practically any direction. It didn’t ruin the story for me, but it is an area where open-world freedom and narrative intent don’t always work perfectly together.

That freedom creates genuinely personal moments. I could look at a cliff and build a bridge. Someone else could improvise a vehicle. Someone more patient might find an elegant solution using the scenery. And there is always that fourth person who will connect ten random objects and discover, by accident, that it also solves the problem.

It is rare for a game to let you do something completely stupid and, instead of blocking the attempt, simply answer: all right, let’s see if it works.

Fuse turns even junk into a tool

Fuse also changes your relationship with weapons and materials a lot. Durability is still there, something that will certainly keep dividing opinions, but now there is much more reason to experiment. A simple sword can take a monster part and become much more powerful. Arrows can be combined with different materials to produce specific effects. Shields accept objects that look completely absurd until you find some use for them.

That makes practically any reward potentially valuable. In Breath of the Wild, there were moments when I hoarded materials without thinking much about them. Here, it is common to look at a part dropped by an enemy and immediately imagine where it could be used.

And some combinations are ugly. Very ugly.

But that lack of visual elegance is part of the fun. Tears of the Kingdom often prefers being fun to being pretty.

Ascend and Recall seem simple until they change the way you think

Ascend is probably the least impressive ability in a demo, but it became one of the ones I used most. Being able to pass through a surface above Link completely changes exploration. A cave stops being just an entrance and an exit. Certain buildings gain routes that were probably not the ones the puzzle imagined. After a few hours, I started looking at ceilings the same way I used to look at climbable walls.

Recall works with a different logic. Instead of moving something directly, it lets an object retrace its own path. It is great for sending projectiles back, creating improvised platforms and turning objects that fell from the sky into elevators to the islands above.

The combination of these abilities creates something rare. The game doesn’t just hand you tools. It trains the player to look at the world in another way.

Ultrahand still lets you join objects and create machines that range from ingenious to complete disaster.

Fuse keeps turning monster parts, plants, rocks and practically anything into combat tools.

Recall still makes the player think about movement and time in a way few puzzles do.

Ascend is still that power that feels completely normal after dozens of hours, until you play something else and realize how much you miss going through a ceiling.

These are systems that haven’t aged, because they weren’t built around technological spectacle.

They were built around creativity.

Hyrule still rewards the player who abandons the plan

Few games have made me open the map so many times to pick an objective and then completely ignore it.

That hasn’t changed.

In fact, being able to experience everything with better performance made it even easier to fall into that dangerous train of thought:

“I’ll just do this one shrine.”

Then a cave shows up.

Then a dragon.

Then something falls from the sky.

Then you notice there is something strange on a mountain miles away.

When you finally get back to the original quest, an hour has vanished.

That is the real loop of Tears of the Kingdom.

It’s not completing tasks.

It’s letting curiosity constantly get in the way of what you meant to do.

Tears of the Kingdom has some of Nintendo’s best moments of scale precisely when Link is high above the map and the player can see miles of terrain below. On Switch 2, the sharper image makes that transition even more impressive.

HDR also helps on compatible screens. The contrast between the bright regions of the skies and the darkness of the Depths becomes much more striking. Light sources in that underground world have more presence, while sunrises and sunsets make better use of the brightness range.

It doesn’t transform the art direction.

It enhances what was already there.

Temples, bosses, big events and specific moments of the story get much more striking compositions. There are themes that start quietly and keep adding elements as the player progresses through a given challenge.

The result is a soundtrack that manages to respect Breath of the Wild’s contemplative identity while delivering much grander moments.

Nothing important from the original experience was lost.

There is no new art direction trying to replace the previous one.

There is no control scheme that was changed in a controversial way.

There is no rebuild of characters or environments.

It’s Tears of the Kingdom.

Only sharper, faster and much smoother.

For anyone who has never played it, I see no reason to choose the old version if you have a Switch 2 available.

For those who have already finished the adventure, the answer depends much more on whether you want to return to Hyrule. The update doesn’t bring a new campaign, extra temples or big new areas. If you wanted new content, you won’t find it.

But if you were waiting for an excuse to start another journey, this is an excellent one.

A second save file is a simple improvement I really wanted

There is also a small but very useful benefit: an additional save slot.

Tears of the Kingdom is the kind of game that easily goes past a hundred hours, so starting over always involves that small feeling of messing with something precious.

Having an extra option makes a new journey much more comfortable.

It’s the kind of change that probably wouldn’t sell an update on its own, but it makes perfect sense in an edition created precisely to encourage veterans to come back.

The ability to turn builds into shareable codes is particularly interesting. There is a huge community dedicated to creating vehicles, machines and mechanical abominations, so making that exchange easier is a logical choice.

There are also features for sharing items and additional information related to the adventure.

All of that is welcome.

But none of it is the main reason to buy or install the update.

The really important reasons are performance, resolution and loading times.

Relying on a phone still feels strange

I have a small criticism of the way some of these extras were implemented.

Zelda Notes depends on an external device.

It’s not a big problem, because the main content remains fully functional without the app, but some of these tools could have been integrated directly into the game or into the Switch 2 system.

It’s curious to have a new, more powerful console and still need to look at another screen to access certain complementary features.

It doesn’t spoil the edition.

It just keeps the new extras from feeling as elegant as the technical improvements.