Tears of the Kingdom is the smash hit sequel to one of the best games ever made, The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and while you would expect sequels to build upon the first game, that isn’t always the case. Today I’d like to focus on the things Tears of the Kingdom did better than Breath of the Wild, plus I’ve got other Zelda Creators along to give you their opinions and thoughts on the topic too.

If you enjoy this video then subscribe for more Zelda content, plus a big thank you to CM30, TuneForge Theory, Gabeora, Pixel Fusion and WindWaker Hyrule for contributing to this video. Links to their channels will be down below in the description, and I recommend subscribing to their channels and checking out their awesome Zelda content.

Without further delay, let’s check out some of the things Tears of the Kingdom did better than Breath of the Wild.

More world bosses

I’m going to start off with world bosses in Tears of the Kingdom. Back in Breath of the Wild we had Guardians and Lynels to contend with, but in Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo levelled up the world bosses to include Contructs and Gleeoks, with the latter being tough even compared to Lynel standards. I loved the inventive Contructs, who would take themselves apart and rearrange themselves mid-battle, plus the returning Gleeoks from the original Legend of Zelda really set Tears of the Kingdom apart.

Verticality

The sky was a big part of the marketing for Tears of the Kingdom, and the verticality this added to the game was impressive. The journey to the Wind Temple is one of the best sequences I can remember in gaming. From starting the journey to the Wind Temple where you have to blast yourself into the sky islands and then slowly make your way up higher and higher, with the music getting bolder and louder as you climb, it’s close enough to a perfect sequence for me, culminating in finding the Wind Temple and diving into a tornado… it’s fantastic.

Ultrahand

Ultrahand was a game changer in Tears of the Kingdom, having the ability to piece together items in the world to create weapons, vehicles and solve puzzles. While I do miss the bomb rune in Breath of the Wild, the creativity of Link’s abilities in Tears of the Kingdom is unmatched. Nintendo saw what creators were doing in Breath of the Wild through making make-shirt vehicles, and then turned that dial up to 11 by adding Ultrahand. When Tears of the Kingdom first came out developers took to Twitter to shoutout what Nintendo has done here, and the fact it runs well on a Nintendo Switch is a testament to the development team.

Expanded world

We knew we were going back to the same Hyrule, so Nintendo had to switch things up, and I think they did that pretty well. They added the Sky Islands, and while they weren’t as filled in as perhaps we wanted them to be, it was still thrilling to dive off the sky islands down to Hyrule. The sky islands were multi layered too, it wasn’t simply just go up to the sky islands and then run in a straight line, often you’ve be climbing and climbing for hours on end.

Then we had The Depths, probably the best kept secret in the build up to Tears of the Kingdom. I didn’t find out about the Depths until I found my first hole in Hyrule field, dove in and found myself underground. The Depths are a build on the twin worlds found in other Zelda games, like the Dark World in A Link To The Past, but instead of going through a portal to reach this world, you simply go underground. Both the sky islands and the Depths were a great addition to Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom.

Story

I found the story in Tears of the Kingdom more engaging than Breath of the Wild. The story beats were easier to find, the story itself was more compelling, plus there were characters I cared about. I still think Nintendo has some challenges related to telling a story in an open world, given players can encounter it in any order. It’ll be interesting to see how Nintendo tackles this problem in future Zelda games, especially if we’re going to stick to the open world Zelda formula, which Aonuma has confirmed. While the mechanics for telling the story could be iterated upon, I do think the story in Tears of the Kingdom was more engaging than Breath of the Wild.

Fuse

While weapons still break in Tears of the Kingdom, Fuse made it much more bearable. Having the ability to stick together two weapons to increase the durability and damage was great and a partial solution to a feature that angered many in Breath of the Wild. Nintendo clearly took on the feedback from fans and wanted to some up with something that still gave us the sense of discovery and the need to find nnew weapons, but made the breakable weapons easier to deal with. I also lik the adition of materials fused with arrows, the exploding mushrooms, ice/fire/electric arrow with chuchu jelly. Fuse was a great experiment and it felt better than what we had in Breath of the Wild.

Traversal

There are so many ways to get around Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom. You can ride a horse, or you can construct a vehicle. You can climb high into the sky islands and then fly across Hyrule in a wing suit, or you can travel underground in the Depths. Some of the vehicles that people has put together have been truely impressive. In Breath of the Wild we had a simple horse, but in Tears of the Kingdom our imagination is our only barrier, which makes traversal much better compared to what we had in Breath of the Wild.

Ganondorf

Ganondorf returned in Tears of the Kingdom. First we met him in the depths, a mummified corpse version of the Demon King. We learned about the Imprisioning War through our memories with Princess Zelda, plus our interactions with the Sages and Rauru. The final battle with Ganondorf has to go down as my favourite gaming memory of 2023, first fighting his army, then fdacing off against him 1v1, until we take to thr skies for the final dragon battle. It’s epic, and it’s a large part due to Ganondorf returning. There’s something special about having Link, Zelda and Ganondorf all in the same game, and for me is one of the reasons why Tears of the Kingdom is better than Breath of the Wild.

Once again, huge thanks to CM30, TuneForge, Gabeora, PixelFusion and WindWakerHyrule for getting involved in this project and make sure to check them out through the links in the description.

Let me know what you think in the comments, let me know what you think Tears of the Kingdom did better than Breath of the Wild.