YMMV / The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Though there's no question that this game's incarnation of Ganondorf is one of the most evil ones to date, his methods regarding the conquest of Hyrule leave much to debate. Namely, did Ganondorf always intend to become an Omnicidal Maniac who wanted to destroy everything by creating an army of monsters? Or did he merely intend to find a way to usurp the throne of Hyrule on behalf of the Gerudo, before he became aware of Sonia's Secret Stone and set his sights on it? Once he got the Secret Stone, did it twist and amplify Ganondorf's mere lust for power into a lust for destruction? The Gerudo Champion's words on the matter further muddle the issue, as it's shown that the Gerudo were devoted to serving their king and taking Hyrule by force when he was a mortal man, but immediately withdrew their support when he became the Demon King.
  • One of the most hotly-debated aspects of Ganondorf's character in this game (especially among lore enthusiasts) is whether he is still a product of the Demon King Demise's curse on Hyrule.^note Note that much of the discourse stems from the English translation of Skyward Sword; the Japanese original's wording indicates more that the war between monsters and the gods' creations will never end On the one hand, the game, much like Breath of the Wild, mostly ignores the events of previous entries and gives Ganondorf a new origin story that clashes with the series' pre-established canon. On the other hand, the continued existence of Fi, numerous Continuity Nods and Easter Eggs, and the fact that Ganondorf's Demon King form looks exactly like Demise all seem to indicate some sort of connection to older games, which just makes things more confusing.
  • Due to Link's ever-present muteness, his relative inaction regarding his discovery of Zelda's true fate has attracted much speculation and attempted justification.
    • Was Link aware that the "Zelda" spotted around Hyrule was actually an imposter prior to The Reveal? It's difficult to tell due to his lack of dialogue, but given the sheer number of hints he pursues and the Obviously Evil nature of Phantom Ganon's disguise, it's quite possible he suspected something was wrong the entire time and simply chose to confront "Zelda" head-on so he could figure out the truth.
    • Why doesn't Link tell anyone besides Impa that Zelda became the Light Dragon after he discovers the truth? Once again, his lack of dialogue provides zero confirmed reason, but many different interpretations exist as to why he doesn't tell anyone. The most common theory is that Link is deliberately keeping the information secret so that it won't cause a panic nor jeopardize the efforts to rebuild Hyrule. Others believe that because he believes that Zelda's transformation is permanent, he is dealing with serious grief about it and therefore doesn't want to talk about it. Still others believe that since the Dragons are confirmed to be only seen by a select few, no one will believe Link if he spreads the news.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Due to the way their abilities are implemented, the sage avatars can be this because of a combination of being difficult to activate when you want to use their abilities, and simultaneously easy to activate by mistake when you don't want to. It's not uncommon to find yourself chasing after one you want to use during a battle, or accidentally activating Tulin or Yunobo when trying to collect items, either blowing them off a ledge or turning the ingredients you were trying to harvest into less useful cooked versions. They also tend to clutter your field of view once you have all five, and trying to use the one you actually want to with a full party can be just as frustrating. They can be dismissed at will, but because they are so useful in combat (and out of it, in Tulin's case) you will seldom want to except for as a self-imposed challenge.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The Seized Construct is built up to be a difficult and climactic boss fight, being a Mirror Match between Mineru's newly constructed form and the Gloom-corrupted prototype, but if you grab a cannon attachment, you can stunlock it and keep it from ever attacking you. Even without doing that, the fight is extremely straightforward and essentially comes down to mashing the attack button. Heck, if you'd already fought Master Kohga at the Abandoned Hebra Mine, you've already faced a much harder version of this boss - unless, of course, you've already obtained Mineru in which case it's basically the same.
  • Moragia appears intimidating due to its massive size (larger than Death Mountain's crater) and monstrous multiheaded Sand Worm-esque design, yet it goes down shockingly quickly. Each head takes only a single use of Yunobo's Power of Fire to destroy. Flying into position to hit them is made easy by the fact that the game places a pre-built glider with four fans and two large batteries at the start of the fight. For such an imposing-looking miniboss, it amounts to little more than a tutorial for using Yunobo's ability in combat.
  • Despite their frightening appearance the Gloom Spawn and Phantom Ganon are really only dangerous at the beginning of the game and deal surprisingly little damage once the player gets some decent armour. Compared to Lynels and Gleeoks they aren't much of a threat.
  • Much like Calamity Ganon in the previous game, while the Final Boss battle against Ganondorf is ordinarily a challenging and engaging fight, a good portion of the endgame-tier equipment can make his fight unexpectedly short, as using them properly allows many of them to deal double damage and thus eat through massive chunks of his otherwise high HP. In particular, stocking up on decayed Royal Broadswords and fusing Silver Lynel Saber Horns to them can end his boss fight in only six Flurry Rushes, and even the "intended" method of using the Master Sword and fusing a Silver Lynel Saber Horn to that isn't far behind.^note Because the Master Sword has a base damage of 60 when fighting Gloom Spawns, Phantom Ganons, and Ganondorf himself, the addition of a Silver Lynel Saber Horn (+55) nearly doubles that damage.
  • Unfortunately, just like the battle against Dark Beast Ganon in the last game, the showdown against the Demon Dragon is more of a spectacle than a challenge. Just like that fight, its attacks are slow, heavily telegraphed, and most of the fight is just spent waiting for its weak points to appear so you can hit them. Its attacks still inflict Gloom damage, which can almost immediately be healed since it takes place outside, but can also do extra strong Gloom damage like in the previous phase of the fight which causes permanent loss of Hearts. Even still, it's incredibly easy to avoid most of its attacks and regular Gloom damage mainly comes from having to be so close to the boss's weak points. It does at least succeed as a spectacle more than its equivalent in the first game, but as a fight it leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully, the fights preceding it manage to be challenging enough to make up for the final one being lacking.
• Award Snub: The game was nominated for five awards at the 2023 Game Awards, including Game of the Year. Unlike Breath of the Wild, it lost four of them, only winning Best Action/Adventure and losing out on Game of the Year to Baldur's Gate III. The reason why the game got snubbed unlike its predecessor is largely boiled down to two main factors. The first factor is that it was released in a heavily competitive year full of heavy hitters (including the aforementioned Baldur's Gate III). The second factor is that the game lacked the novel factor that Breath of the Wild benefitted from, being a late Switch title released after many games have replicated BotW's formula, rather than a groundbreaking launch title for the Switch like BoTW was.
• Awesome Art: As if Breath of the Wild wasn't gorgeous enough, Tears of the Kingdom adds the Sky, with its beautiful, serene Scenery Porn and soft yellow hues, and the Depths, a visually striking realm that uses darkness and muted colors to unnerve and intrigue players.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • The Colgera battle is a fan-favorite moment in the game due to its epic presentation, amazing song, open tactics and unique use of the diving mechanic as an offensive tool.
  • Marbled Gohma is very satisfying to fight due to the countering abilities provided, with Recall allowing you to send its explosive eggs back on top of its head to stun it, or back up in the air to escape a barrier of them around you. Using Yunobo to knock out its legs is also cathartic. The original fight in the dungeon has its own dimension of fun: in its second phase, Marbled Gohma goes on the ceiling and the player has to roll Yunobo up the curved walls to hit its legs there.
  • The battle against Mucktorok is a great way to cap off the Zoras' portion of the story, with a cool sludge shark form that will test your skills with the bow. Once Mucktorok proper gets exposed, the Danny Elfman-esque Variable Mix that plays when you expose him, as well as his goofy animations, make him a satisfying foe to overcome in spite of — or perhaps because of — how exasperating it can be to actually deal damage once he starts coating the entire arena in sludge hazards.
  • The final fight against Ganondorf, in both his original and Demon King forms. The first phase is a proper one-on-one fight that brings to mind the fights from Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. It's difficult, it's climactic, and he can even pull some of your own tricks that you can do on you, like dodging to slow time. The second phase is no slouch, either, with double the health of his first form and four Phantom Ganons to fight you alongside him. Thankfully, the Sages join you for this phase, making the whole fight deliciously chaotic. To top it all off, the final phase of the fight returns to the one-on-one duel, with Ganondorf hitting you with everything he's got, being able to dodge your flurry rushes and permanently remove hearts. While easy, the Demon Dragon that follows is still a spectacle, and you still have to put some effort to bring him down, especially in the final attack where you have to dodge at least two barrages of Gloom while in his line of sight and then land the most epic finisher in the series.
• Awesome Levels: Just about all the dungeons this time around are incredibly challenging and rewarding to go through.
  • The Lightning Temple is a treat for fans of more traditional Zelda dungeons, as it features an enclosed environment and more linear structure that still fits into the newer game design. On top of that, the dungeon has excellent narrative and atmosphere, beginning with a fight to introduce the horrifying boss you'll need to defeat in full later. It features a dark basement crawl through the temple's Gibdo-filled tombs before it opens up with the main chamber and multi-floor puzzling to activate generators. The place feels like it has elements of three well-regarded dungeons from earlier games as well (similarities are visible with the Arbiter's Grounds, Ancient Cistern, and Ocarina's Spirit Temple), which helps it even more.
  • The Fire Temple makes use of mine carts all throughout its multiple floors, meaning that much of your time spent in it will involve rapidly zooming through its maze-like architecture. The fights that take place while you're in opposing mine carts only make these sections even more fun, and that's before getting into the many ways that lava and water are used for the puzzles throughout it. Topping it all off is the incredibly enjoyable boss fight against Marbled Gohma, as well as excellent music that brings to mind the Fire Temple from Ocarina of Time with its droning, industrial noise and occasional chanting.
  • The Wind Temple is a massive, lovely throwback to the Sandship from Skyward Sword. Taking place aboard a massive, abandoned ship floating in the sky that's flooded with Constructs and wind and ice manipulation puzzles. The obstacles throughout the dungeon are particularly enjoyable, including turrets that can shoot you out of the sky if you aren't careful that add to the challenge of exploring. The structure of the dungeon is also the most similar to the Divine Beasts for fans who enjoyed that concept.
  • The Construct Factory's whole gimmick is Zonai devices and building vehicles. Just about every kind of vehicle, from gliders to mine carts to standard cars, is utilized in some way throughout the dungeon, leading to a variety of physics-based puzzles that require interesting ways of utilizing Zonai devices. To top it all off, your reward for finishing this dungeon is essentially a customizable mech suit. This does result in the Spirit Temple being much shorter and more direct than normal, but both locations are tied to a single questline and the trip in between is also cathartic and fun due to using Mineru's new spirit armor to travel over huge swaths of Gloom-blighted ground without losing health.
  • The Mayachideg Shrine, perhaps the only Proving Grounds shrine that isn't That One Level. Not only are the Constructs in this shrine more spaced out than usual, making it more unlikely for them to gang up on you, but the purpose of the shrine is to use the Homing Carts. So, you can just run around and activate the devices and then sit back and watch as the adorable roombas destroy the Constructs for you. If you've done multiple Proving Grounds shrines before this one, it's downright cathartic.
• Awesome Music: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Base-Breaking Character: Rauru. Many love him for his Nice Guy personality, helpfulness to Link and Zelda, Character Development during the memory cutscenes, and his epic Heroic Sacrifice that manages to seal the Demon King himself away for thousands of years. Some, however, dislike the potential implications of his role as the first King of Hyrule on the series' lore, and the fact that he plays right into Ganondorf's hands by accepting the Gerudo king's blatantly deceptive "truce", causing some to interpret him as Too Dumb to Live despite him being aware Ganondorf was lying through his teeth. There's also some fans who don't like how Rauru is radically different from his Ocarina of Time namesake, and would've liked him to be the same, or at least someone similar to the original character.
• Breather Boss:
  • Although the Depths are otherwise dangerous, dark, and full of Gloom, Froxes are not nearly as intimidating as their imposing looks would suggest. The Frox's main attacks are a Shockwave Stomp and slamming its hands down on the ground, both of which are easy to dodge if you're keeping away from it. Then, it'll inhale, an obvious cue to toss or shoot a Bomb Flower into its mouth. Unlike other bosses, it will hurl Link a considerable distance away when it shakes him off its back, but this is also to the player's advantage — get out the Paraglider once you're in the air and you can turn around and shoot an arrow into the Frox's eye, which will stun it as if you'd fed it another bomb. From there, the process can easily continue again and again until the Frox dies. And if it's not using its inhale attack often enough, there's an alternative way to stun it - Dazzle Fruit, normally only useful for getting out of tight spots or cheesing monster strongholds, will topple a Frox just like an arrow to the eye but much easier.
  • Colgera is considerably a pushover compared to the other elemental temple bosses, in part due to the massive airspace in the boss arena which gives you plenty of dodging room against its attacks, and more importantly, Colgera being much frailer than the other temple bosses: Its weak points and the ice sheets covering them are so flimsy you only need a couple of arrows to break them all, or if you like to show off, divebomb them with Link himself to save your arrows.
  • Hinoxes in general are pushovers compared to the other overworld minibosses, but one black Hinox in particular is fought in a room that contains dozens of bomb barrels, which explode if you drop it from sufficient height. As long as you're careful and quick with Ultrahand, you can defeat this black Hinox without expending your weapons at all.
  • For some, Phantom Ganon in the overworld. Compared to the preceding fight where you deal with Gloom Spawn, five evil hands that are near-impossible to attack with regular weapons on top of being unblockable and able to regenerate if you don't kill them fast enough, that boss fight is a simple affair of a one-on-one duel against an enemy you can block and even Flurry Rush.
• Broken Base:
  • One of the bigger divides in the fanbase between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how the memories are handled in each game. Some players prefer how Tears handles the memories due to how they introduce characters and information that aren't present in the main game, finding it an effective Jigsaw Puzzle Plot and criticizing Breath's memories for squandering such an opportunity for mostly reiterating information that is repeatedly given to the player. Other players prefer Breath's memories because they reiterate information given earlier, feeling that this approach builds upon existing information learned before and is better tailored to the non-linear, interactive structure of the game, criticizing Tears's memories for attempting to have a linear story that can easily become disjointed due to the game's nonlinearity. Overall, this debate hinges on whether linear, sequential storytelling or non-linear, reiterative storytelling conveys a compelling plot better and/or is better suited to the Wild Saga's non-linear structure.
  • The idea that the Kingdom of Hyrule was founded by the Zonai king Rauru and his Hylian wife Sonia has proven divisive, especially in relation to Skyward Sword and its own implications on the rest of the timeline. Many fans, particularly those who dislike Skyward Sword, prefer Tears of the Kingdom's large ignorance of its lore, believing that Tears of the Kingdom's origins of Hyrule and its Royal Family are much more compelling as originating from relatively down-to-earth races than Skyward Sword's perceived over-reliance on the goddess Hylia. On the other hand, fans and defenders of Skyward Sword often dislike Tears of the Kingdom's origin of Hyrule, criticizing it for shoehorning the Zonai into Hyrule's history when they were never hinted at before Breath of the Wild's supplementary material and believing that Hylia being the origin of the Royal Family fit more with the Japanese manual of A Link to the Past stating that the Hylians were "closest to the gods." Other fans think both Skyward Sword and Tears of the Kingdom have perfectly valid origins on their own, but reaction varies on whether or not this game should've been more decisive with the "Wild Saga" being a hard reboot of the series as a whole, to whether or not Tears of the Kingdom should've better reconciled its origins with that of Skyward Sword via light Rewrites and Revisions instead of largely brushing it to the side. Although Hidemaro Fujibayashi has hinted in a Famitsu interview that Rauru and Sonia might have re-established Hyrule after it was previously destroyed, this is a Shrug of God at best.
  • In a more humorous example, there is a disconnect between the playerbase and game developers regarding how the final product came about — specifically, how the Ultrahand mechanic was handled. On the consumer's end, there was a bit of shade thrown at Nintendo for how a sequel to Breath of the Wild managed to take so long to create despite heavily reusing assets from its predecessor, understandably expecting more in the four years following the sequel's announcement at E3 2019. Conversely, anyone who's experienced with game development will take a good look at Ultrahand and instead question the production timetable in the other direction, wondering how Ultrahand's rock-solid implementation and nigh-endless customization was achieved in only four years when it's something that AAA developers the world over are still grappling with to this day.
  • The Mattison's Independence questline, involving the daughter of Rhondson and Hudson. In this quest, the only five or six years old daughter Mattison has to go to Gerudo Town to live and study there, as is law for Gerudo. While some defend this as simply following her race's values, others feel that the law and values are simply wrong. The fact that all Gerudo must leave their homes at a very young age when most children are not nearly ready to become independent and still rely on their parents is questionable to say the least. Worse yet is the fact this decision to send her to Gerudo Town is shown to be emotionally devastating to everyone in the family, especially Mattison, as evidenced by her diary. Values Dissonance of the ethics of sending kids to what is basically boarding school (as Mattison's situation is comparable to) only adds fuel to this debate.
• Can't Un-Hear It:
  • Good luck playing the previous games featuring Ganondorf without hearing Matthew Mercer's intimidating voice. Same goes for non-English-speaking audiences with Ganondorf's voice in their native language, such as with his French VA Frédéric Souterelle's take getting praise both inside and outside of Francophone regions.
  • Thanks to Patricia Summersett's improved performance, it can be hard to replay games featuring grown-up versions of Zelda (namely Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword) without hearing her elegant vocals.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • As this version of Ganondorf is much viler and nastier than his other counterparts, it is definitely satisfying to see his smugness disappear and to see him undergo a cataclysmic Villainous Breakdown when you defeat him in his Demon King form, especially after all the vile actions he committed, including the murder of Queen Sonia, and the horrific decision to become a dragon that Zelda had to make to restore the Master Sword because of him.
  • Link succeeding in saving Zelda after he failed to do so at the beginning brought immense emotional relief to many players.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • "Zelda" during the present day being nothing more than an imposter, especially if you already saw the 9th memory prior to the reveal, as that memory already gave away the existence of a Zelda imposter. Combined with all the other hints the game lays about the present-day Zelda being sinister in nature, it can be quite easy for the player to put two and two together. It's also not the first time it's happened. Not really helping matters with this twist is if you already did the Dragon Tears and also learned Zelda became a dragon, making it even more of a dead giveaway.
  • For that matter, figuring out that Zelda is the Light Dragon isn't that hard. Once Mineru mentions "draconification" to Zelda, it's not a huge leap to connect Zelda to the new fourth dragon that has appeared in this game. It becomes even more obvious once you get close enough to the Light Dragon to see that its mane is in the same hairstyle as Zelda's. For that matter, the mere fact that it's called "the Light Dragon" where all three other dragons are referred to by name suggests that there's something significant about this dragon's name, and from there identifying whose name would be signifcant enough to warrant such measures is a simple process of elimination.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Due to the vagueness of the era and slightly poor phrasing amongst fans, many people confuse the time of Hyrule's founding that Zelda ends up in with the 10,000 years ago of the last Great Calamity, when it's implied to have been so long ago there isn't even an estimate for a date.
  • When the game was first released, it was commonly reported that Evermeans are Yiga soldiers in disguise, due to someone in their hideout saying that they've started disguising themselves as trees in order to attack travelers. What the soldier is referring to is a type of trap where they lay a set of bananas on the ground while hiding within fake trees. whenever Link picks them up, the Yiga cast these disguises off and attack. Evermeans are just monstrous, sentient trees with no connection to the Yiga.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Ultrahand and Zonai devices are intended to push the player to be constantly experimental and inventive when crafting vehicles, but after the simple build of the hoverbike (a control stick between two angled Zonai fans) was publicized by players, that assembly quickly usurped most alternatives for many due to its high mobility and easy control, parts efficiency, and most of all, being a flying vehicle that's not on a strict time limit of existence. A hoverbike can demolish most traversal objectives and can easily become a go-to for getting around, to the point that other vehicle builds may find themselves relegated only to combat or cargo purposes.
• Complete Monster: Demon King Ganondorf was once a brutal Gerudo warlord who sought to conquer Hyrule during the kingdom's founding days. Desiring the power of the Zonai Secret Stones, Ganondorf murders Queen Sonia after swearing false fealty to King Rauru, and steals her Secret Stone to transform himself into the Demon King. With his newfound powers, Ganondorf creates an army of demons and monsters to sweep over Hyrule and kill all who would oppose him, including his own people, in the cataclysmic Imprisoning War until he is sealed away for eons by Rauru. In that timespan, Ganondorf's malice manages to leak through the seal, creating Calamity Ganon, a primal force of evil that brought destruction upon Hyrule for countless generations, with the last one bringing the kingdom's collapse. After freeing himself in the present day, Ganondorf resumes his destructive campaign by unleashing monsters, saboteurs, and natural disasters upon the races of Hyrule, promising to finish what he had started. Faced with defeat by Link and the Sages, Ganondorf swallows his Secret Stone to become the Demon Dragon, sacrificing his mind and body for the power to destroy Link and plunge Hyrule into the "eternal night" of destruction and despair. A cruel monster of a man, lacking the redeeming or tragic qualities his incarnations often have, Ganondorf believes himself to be superior to everyone else and thus deserves to rule Hyrule as he sees fit.
• Contested Sequel: While nobody considers the game to be bad, opinions are divided over whether or not the game is a good sequel to Breath of the Wild. Some fans regard it to be an Even Better Sequel due to the addition of the Sky Islands and the Depths, the dungeons being more varied than the divine beasts, the new abilities adding a lot of new options for traversal, the building gimmick with the Ultrahand being tons of fun, and the inclusion of Ganondorf, amongst other things. Others, however, found it to be a rehash of Breath of the Wild that recycles too much content and offers little new to truly differentiate it from BoTW, fails to fix that game's issues (at best, only putting a band-aid on them), and has a more disappointing and underdeveloped story by comparison.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The major reason one can have fun brutalizing Koroks with all sorts of inventive, cruel torture devices is because they often react with a simple "oof" and some mild distress at worst, otherwise doing so would be nothing short of horrifying. Some players who do this even immediately regret it should something go wrong, jumping from gleeful torturer to panicking for the Korok's safety, which is equally hilarious to watch.
• Demonic Spiders: The Gloom Spawn are not only incredibly scary, but also incredibly deadly, no thanks to their ability to sap your maximum health. They are also very tricky to defeat and deceptively fast, being able to follow Link through a surprising extent of environments, meaning they can easily catch up to the player if they slow down at any point. Even worse, if you do manage to somehow kill them, Phantom Ganon will spawn as a result. There is, however, one loophole - if you get to a spot where they can't reach you, they'll eventually just die on their own with no follow-up. There's also a fairly easy way to cheese them if they don't spot you immediately - using a multishot Lynel bow, Bullet Time, and bomb arrows will shred through their health in about 3 shots, and hitting Phantom Ganon in the face with bombs will stun him with each hit while taking huge chunks of health each time.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Almost immediately after the game's release, Lady Yona ended up demonized by hardcore Link/Sidon shippers for being the latter's fiancée and later his wife, killing any chance of the pairing becoming canon.
  • Tauro in Kakariko Village has been the subject of demonization as well from those who ship Link and Paya, although his case is far less apparent than Yona's because Paya's relationship with him appears to be purely professional while she still harbors deep affection for Link according to her character profile in game, not that this has stopped fans and writers from making their feelings known.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • "Yiga Zelda" only makes two brief appearances throughout the game; on the Dueling Peaks during the Lucky Clover Gazette questline, and later as an out-of-the-way Easter Egg on the Great Plateau. Despite her limited screentime, she was well-received by players and became a popular subject for fanart, typically featuring her as a more Laughably Evil fake Zelda to contrast with Phantom Ganon.
  • Colgera (Wind Temple) gets this for being seen as a good Starter Villain, his design and powers, and his Memetic Badass glitch where his HP bar stands in for Ganondorf's.
  • Like Lynels, Gleeoks return as a fan-favorite Boss in Mook Clothing with their own badass battle theme, awesome, sinister designs, and excellent drops that are among the most powerful element-based attachments in the game.
  • Despite being relevant to only one Side Adventure, Cece is popular with fans for being a progressive fashionista with a quirky fascination with mushrooms. She also gifts Link a hat that makes him look like a Drag Queen, much to the delight of the LGBT Fanbase and anyone who missed the Gerudo outfit from BOTW.
• Even Better Sequel: Tears of the Kingdom is widely considered to be an improvement on the already acclaimed Breath of the Wild, to the point that some have claimed TotK makes the latter look like a tech demo. Not only do the new abilities like Ultrahand, Fuse, and Ascend allow for near-limitless creativity while addressing some of the contentious game mechanics of BotW (such as climbing and weapon durability), but the size of the world map has been practically tripled thanks to the additions of the Sky, the Depths, and the plethora of cave systems littered throughout Hyrule. Add on a more epic, layered story with memorable characters, dungeons that mix traditional themes and puzzle-solving with the freedom of the Divine Beasts, exciting bosses, and even the return of Ganondorf himself, and you have a sequel that improves upon its predecessor in almost every way. As BotW was already considered one of the greatest games of all time, let alone in the series, this elevates TotK to the same status, albeit released in a year loaded with other games of exceptionally high quality such as Baldur's Gate III.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Ganondorf is back and badder than ever, as well as voiced by Matthew Mercer himself, giving fans one of the most well-received versions of the Demon King yet.
  • The return of Phantom Ganon has been widely praised for being both an unexpected treat for longtime fans and a genuinely unnerving Knight of Cerebus, helped immensely by its Nothing Is Scarier design and Patricia Summersett's chilling performance during the Blood Moons.
  • Surprisingly, even Master Kohga counts this time around, having both expanded his operations and learned how to harness Zonai technology to effectively conquer the Depths. Combine that with his creative boss fights, usual hilarious antics, and the fact that he manages to pose a serious threat by the end of his quest, and you've got yourself one memorable returning villain.
  • The Gleeoks make their long-awaited 3D debut, and they don't disappoint. They serve as some of the hardest and most rewarding boss fights in the game and feature impressively detailed and threatening character designs, much to the delight of classic Zelda fans.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: While everybody understands it happening in canon was never going to be an option, plenty of fans have taken to the idea of Zelda potentially not being cured of her draconification. Whether it's Link experiencing nightmares about her reverting to mindless monstrosity or him having to be The Caretaker for her mindless body, there have been plenty of fan-art and fanfics by people who would've liked there to be at least some form of lasting consequences of her sacrifice.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The reveal of the Ancient Hero being non-Hylian has given the idea that Link may have incarnated as one of more unconventional races in the past.
  • The largely unexplored interim of a few years between Breath of the Wild and this game was a ripe source of fanfics even before the latter's announcement. With the game's announcement and eventual release, many fanfics attempt to expand on the tribes' attempts to rebuild Hyrule and especially the almost complete disappearance of ancient Sheikah technology between games.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Gloom Spawn are far more commonly known as "Gloom Hands"; due to them being unable to be photographed for the Hyrule Compendium, their name is only given in an easily missed loading screen tip and from a single guard that you have no reason to talk to outside the Hyrule Castle gate. And among older Zelda fans, it's not uncommon for them to just straight up call them Floormasters.
  • The Demon Dragon (Ganondorf's One-Winged Angel form) is very commonly referred as "Dragondorf".
  • The four Sages from Hyrule's founding have No Name Given, but thanks to them wearing masks that match the appearances of the Divine Beasts and how Rauru shares his name with a character from Ocarina of Time, who was himself named after a town in The Adventure of Link, consensus is that their names are Medli or Mido for the Rito Sage of Wind, Darunia for the Goron Sage of Fire, Nabooru for the Gerudo Sage of Lightning, and Ruto for the Zora Sage of Water.
  • Since Mineru's construct is basically a mecha, some fans refer to it as "Mecharu".
• Fanon: While the game doesn't delve into the fate of the Guardians and other Sheikah tech from Breath of the Wild, fans theorize that Purah and Robbie repurposed their parts for the Skyview Towers. It helps that the game does imply this to be the case, as the arms that latch onto Link before launching him up look identical to the Guardians' legs, and Link visibly panics a bit when he first sees them.
• Fountain of Memes: Ganondorf, from his very first (scantily clad) appearance in advertising, quickly became a gold mine for Zelda memes. By the time people got their hands on the game and experienced the story (particularly his notorious Slasher Smile), that gold mine morphed into a diamond mine.
• Franchise Original Sin: A common critique of this game is that the cutscenes when the Sages are awakened all play out pretty much identically with no attempt to make any reference to any other previously awakened Sages in contrast to the extensive Developer's Foresight given to so much else in the game^note The New Sage is addressed by their Ancient Sage with the latter telling the former the true purpose of the boss was to prevent the New Sage from obtaining the secret stone as a ploy by the Demon King. Three of the New Sages even say a variant of "Demon King? Secret stone?". The New Sage then bequeaths a Vow to Link. This was also true of the previous game, where each Champion's cutscene after Link frees their respective Divine Beast is also played out in pretty much the same way^note The Champion's spirit manifests in the Divine Beast, addresses Link and expresses gratitude for his actions, ending with them gifting him their respective powers. This is followed by a cutscene of their Divine Beast perching itself to take aim at Calamity Ganon that is finished with a solitary soliloquy. with no reference to any other previously freed Divine Beast. However, in the prior game, the post-boss cutscenes weren't critiqued the same way for a few reasons. Each was distinctive and unique enough that the lack of reference was more forgivable/easier to miss as each one felt similar but different enough to remember what dialogue went with which Champion. Each cutscene also serves to further develop or (if you didn't obtain the memories first) establish each Champion's personality. With Revali and Urbosa, their cutscenes respectively display Character Development and reveal information about their people's history. In contrast, the cutscenes for the Ancient Sages do not show any of their personality or character traits, feature nearly identical dialogue between them, and all reveal the same information that may have already been obtained from the Dragon Tears. This made it much harder for gamers to look past the lack of foresight to the potential of previously awakened Sages.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Surprisingly formed one with its main competitor at The Game Awards, Baldur's Gate III. Despite each fandom cheering on its own game, many still noted that both games are extremely high-quality, and that the race between Baldur's Gate and TotK would likely be a close one. The fact that Baldur's Gate is also based on a beloved fantasy franchise certainly didn't hurt, either. When BG3 ultimately took home Game of the Year, many Zelda fans conceded that it was a fair defeat in a year with stiff competition, with some even congratulating the rival series for finally scoring a win.
  • With Super Mario Bros. Wonder, as both came out the same year after a long, six-year wait between an acclaimed previous installment and present fresh, innovative gameplay for decades-old Nintendo franchises. The usual friendliness between Mario and Zelda fans due their connection via Shigeru Miyamoto helps as well.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In a Famitsu poll, Japanese gamers were asked to rank the land, sky, and Depths. The Depths received a placement below the skies, contrasting most Western players who prefer the Depths due to the creepy atmosphere and larger connected area allowing more exploration (compared to the skies being closer to small levels and requiring extensive vehicle use to travel between the small islands).
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Horriblins, a new enemy found in the labyrinthine caves now littered throughout Hyrule, aren't too difficult to deal with if you can land a well-placed headshot before you enter their field of vision. Once you do, though, they quickly start living up to their name. These foes love to attack with long spears from the ceiling, and they can crawl very quickly, making them difficult to bring to ground level. To make matters worse, they attack in large groups, like Bokoblins. If you're in a room with a bunch of Horriblins and a stronger enemy (say, a Like Like), you're very likely to blunder into danger while trying to avoid the Horriblins' persistent spear strikes.
  • Evermeans aren't particularly fast, and can be easily taken out with an axe-type weapon, but the fact that they're disguised as trees means they can attack out of nowhere when you least expect it. If you don't have an axe-typed weapon on hand, they can take quite a bit of punishment. And God help you if you encounter them when it's raining, which removes one of their weaknesses.
  • Little Froxes, found in the Depths, are weak but annoying foes that like to follow you everywhere, just out of range of all but the longest spears. They don't take much more punishment to kill than Keese, and they don't deal Gloom damage like most Depths enemies — they seemingly only appear to give Link a headache and deplete his weapon durability, as they always come in groups of four or five.
  • Aerocudas that patrol the vast space among sky ruins are the textbook definition of irritation: Either you try to ignore them which results in them crashing onto you, costing you a lot of vertical grounds as you regain your gliding, or you kill them which costs you some stamina and may force you to consume food to reach places you could've reached safely without.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Mucktorok seems tailor-made to be as annoying of a boss as possible, even though it is far from being a hard fight. In fact, it is closer to being a cakewalk rather than not, but only if you don't let the boss abuse its sludge field shenanigans by having Sidon's ability or water items clean the arena. If you do allow it to have its way, Mucktorok will take the Cowardly Boss trope to its logical extreme and turn into a massive slog to hit due to being so small and nimble while you need to wad through lots of slowing gunk.
  • Queen Gibdo is also rather infuriating, due to her erratic movements and the Gibdos swarming you. And then she starts flying... Or when you fight her in the Depths where her spawns are now gloom-infected and there's no light to reflect and help you deal more easily with the horde...
  • Your rematch with Colgera in the Depths pits you against the same, relatively easy boss that you fought at the Wind Temple, but whereas there you're fighting in a fairly well-lit area, here you fight it in the Depths with the full likelihood of stumbling upon it before you can light up the area, meaning you're almost literally fighting blind... while airborne and likely wasting tons of arrows trying to hit its hard to see weakpoints. This gets worse upon reaching phase two, where it whips out the tornados, which makes reaching it and hitting its weak points much harder. Fighting it after lighting a nearby lightroot, however, is as much a cake as its regular boss fight.
  • While Frox is pretty easy to deal with once you know how to cheese it, you still have to deal with the fact that it's invulnerable except on its weak points, which break as you whack them thus necessitating you to break them all one by one. All this while dealing with a boss who can jump to any height to catch you and have attacks that have quite the reach. Also, using heavy weapons against it is also troublesome as its invulnerable body still serves as attackable target that thus drain your weapons' durability when you're swinging them around to hit their weak points, especially because those weak points are spread across multiple elevation on its contoured bodies. Lastly, even once you have climbed it, it's still possible that your lock-on function will aim at its eye, which is now behind its back, wasting your time and weapon while you force the lock-on to switch to the weak points.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • If you had Epona as an Old Save Bonus from the first game via scanning the Smash Bros. Link amiibo, this game will still give you Epona if you scan that amiibo again for the first time. Meaning, you can have two Eponas registered to the stables. This doesn't seem to be intentional, as in either game if you scan that amiibo a second time you'll just get item drops instead of another Epona.
  • Several item duplication glitches were found within the days and weeks following release (two of which were sadly patched since version 1.1.2.):
    • Players could endlessly duplicate any item that could be fused to the bow, and any droppable weapon (including its durability value and buffs). A player need only make one good weapon and duplicate it as many times as desired. They could find diamonds and dupe those to sell for massive profit. Duplicate materials to cut out the grind.
    • For any materials you can hold, all you require is the paraglider or a shield. While you're in the air with the paraglider or shield surf, you can go to the menu, hold up to 5 materials in your arms, and sort and exit the menu at the same time by pressing B+Y. If done correctly, the material count won't decrease despite the items being dropped. You can dupe up to 21 items this way in one jump before they start de-spawning, allowing for quick and easy profit, especially for diamonds.
    • After the previous two were patched out in version 1.1.2, a third glitch was discovered to similarly duplicate any item attachable to an arrow, though it requires a good deal more progress in the game. A particular late-game chasm leading to the Depths^note Tobio's Hollow Chasm, unlocked by reaching the Thunderhead Isles and starting the quest to build Mineru's construct body isn't merely a straight drop down like other chasms, but rather has a sloping tunnel leading up to the final drop, with the loading zone between the overworld and Depths maps being placed at a point in said tunnel. By equipping the desired item to a multi-shot bow (which will replicate the item onto each individual projectile when fired), crossing said loading zone, and then turning around and firing the bow back up the tunnel, the shots will get stuck in midair at the edge of the loading area, then fall harmlessly to the ground where they can be picked up.
  • The escort side quests requires the player to use the environment and a few Zonai devices to efficiently transport them like fans, batteries, etc. You can use Ultrahand to adjust them when necessary, but do it for too long, and they'll tell you to stop, even canceling the escort if you ignore them... or you can just drop them before the dialogue can trigger. Since the timer resets when you stop using Ultrahand, you can just simply lift them to their destination without much hassle.
  • In the final Boss Rush, a trick exists that lets you move to a certain part of the arena, which will skip the scene and go straight to the final Ganondorf fight. This bug is very popular with fans since it's a useful speedrunning trick, creates the funny visual glitch of Colgera's health bar appearing instead of Ganondorf's, and it also plays Colgera's theme over the Ganondorf fight, which a lot of fans love for giving the fight a completely different atmosphere with a more sombre but still epic mood.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Shortly after the reveal of the living corpse in the initial trailer, presumed to be Ganondorf, fans quickly started the "Rehydrated Ganondorf" trend, where the corpse somehow gets revived and transforms into a hunky Ganondorf. Four years later, the final trailer confirmed that this is exactly what happens, right down to the much hunkier Ganondorf.
  • In this game, Malice has been renamed to "Gloom", and is a poisonous substance that negatively affects most life in Hyrule. A few months after this game's release, Pikmin 4 would come out, and introduce another substance coincidentally called Gloom, which is lethal to all types of Pikmin in a similar way to how this game's Gloom is.
• Ho Yay:
  • The introduction of Sidon's fiancée (and later beloved wife) Yona doesn't reduce the level of subtext between Link and Sidon. If anything, there's even more than in the previous game. Yona's introduction comes right after de-gunking a statue in the center of Zora's Domain... which depicts Link riding Sidon when they were fighting Vah Ruta. She claims that any time that Sidon opens his mouth, it's likely to be so he can tell everyone how great Link is. Corroborating this, of the 11 monuments Sidon created to replace the damaged monuments from Breath of the Wild, three of them focus on Link. After becoming the Sage of Water, Sidon gets down on one knee, asks for Link's hand, and gives him a ring. After finishing the Water Temple, Yona admits that she now thinks Link is as amazing as Sidon says; some fans treat this as letting Sidon and Link see each other on the side or even wanting to share Link with Sidon.
  • It's easy to interpret Addison to be heads over heels in love with Hudson, given his complete devotion to Hudson to the point he takes the ads to even the harshest environments, the fact that he often treats the ads as if they were the real Hudson, and consequently his staunch refusal to let go of them unless properly secured.
• I Knew It!:
  • When the game's announcement trailer dropped, many fans speculated that the mummified corpse shown was in fact Ganondorf, and that he would be revived to his normal form during the game (or "rehydrated", as Memetic Mutation would have it). The April 2023 trailer would confirm this speculation by showing Ganondorf's revived human form. Not only that, but when his voice was heard in the February 2023 Direct and in the final trailer, many fans guessed that Ganondorf was being voiced in English by Matthew Mercer. A tweet from Mercer, released the same day as the final trailer, would confirm this.
  • Due to a greater focus on him in one of the DLC missions in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and his overall gung-ho personality both there and in Breath of the Wild, Tulin was speculated to get an expanded role in the sequel. Sure enough, the April 13, 2023 trailer prominently shows him flying alongside Link in several shots, and in the full game, he helps out Link with getting to the Wind Temple, before becoming the Sage of Wind.
  • Some were skeptical of Master Kohga's death in Breath of the Wild due to its overly comedic nature and the fact that we didn't actually see him die. This game shows that he's still alive and had been living in the Depths the entire time.
  • The trailers only seem to focus on Tulin, Sidon and Riju, making fans believe that Yunobo was hidden because of his significance to the plot. Turns out, he ends up being controlled due to a mask he gets from the fake Zelda, and thus he is very significant to the Death Mountain plot.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • A common critique of the open-word map in Breath of the Wild was that it was beautiful, but felt fairly sparse for content, hurt further by its activities feeling limited, repetitive, and less rewarding to discover over time. This game overall massively increases the gameplay variety as well as the density and reward factor of map exploration. The surface Hyrule map has been largely deepened with the addition of caves all over to add dimension to the environment, more chests than before contain unique armor and weapons, some more enemy and boss varieties have been added (including a new class of elite monsters in the Gleeoks), and there are two other map layers (the Sky and the massive Depths) to explore and inject variety into the player's exploration. Furthermore, the Fuse system has added more value to fighting monsters since their parts now enhance weapons, keeping combat with them more worthwhile and offering more agency with the rewards. The new third upgrade stat of Zonai Energy is another major side goal to work on that pushes the gameplay variety of exploring the Sky and Depths. Lastly, Ultrahand building is such a wide and experimental system that there's always something to play around with wherever you go to test ideas with traversal and weaponized machines. It will also keep the player moving around for parts and exploration.
  • The dungeons seem to address most of the issues that players had with the previous game's.
    • While they're still non-linear in nature, and still focus on activating a set number of devices, they're themed as much more classical Zelda temples. They have very distinct structures and visual aesthetics which make their identities more unique than the criticized homogenous feel of the Divine Beasts (which were already heavily similar to BotW's shrines).
    • The Divine Beasts had been criticized for their mechanical-manipulation and navigation puzzles being confusing, particularly with Naboris, but no dungeon in Tears of the Kingdom tasks you with altering the structure of the dungeon.
    • In the previous game, the dungeons, including Hyrule Castle, had also used somewhat jarring 3D maps for navigating, which could be just as much of an obstacle as an aid. All the dungeons here have a more traditional layered "floor-plan" map system, including the castle.
    • The dungeon bosses are also thematically disparate and rooted in Zelda tradition in a way that makes them more distinct and classic-styled as well, avoiding critiques leveled at the Blight Ganons for being too visually and thematically similar.
    • The pre-dungeon quests by themselves are also far more substantial than the previous game. Most of them involve engaging puzzle solving and/or a trek through a perilous obstacle course, instead of Breath of the Wild's brief fetch quests before the Divine Beasts. They also address criticisms of the pre-dungeon quests in other games, particularly Skyward Sword, as none of them require any major collecting or backtracking to get to the dungeon.
    • The Sheikah Shrines, while generally seen as a breath of fresh air and a novel way to integrate mini-dungeons and Heart Pieces into a nonlinear format, were often criticized for having a large number of single-room "puzzle" Shrines and constantly recycling the repetitive "Test of Strength" concept (duels against single, small Guardians). The Shrines of Light, by contrast, have significantly fewer single-room Shrines (and those that exist tend to have more difficult solutions), and the Test of Strength Shrines have been ditched in favor of the Proving Grounds Shrines, smaller-scale adaptations of BotW's well-received Eventide Island quest.
  • The final battle against Calamity Ganon in the prior game was thought of as anticlimactic and far too easy, especially the fight against Dark Beast Ganon right afterwards, where you basically have to actively want to be hurt for it to hit you. This final battle is very different. It's got multiple phases to the fight, including a phase against human Ganondorf, a fight against his Demon King form along with numerous Phantom Ganons, a sequence where he disables the Sages to keep them from interfering, and ends with a massive kaiju battle in the sky against his draconic self. Ganondorf is capable of permanently taking away Link's hearts, making the battle that much more tense, not helped by his ability to do a perfect dodge like Link, forcing Link to counter with either a perfect dodge of his own or a well-timed parry to get past his defenses. And while the Demon Dragon is pretty easy, it's generally agreed to be a much better setpiece than Dark Beast Ganon.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • A common complaint about the game prior to its release was that it was iterating upon the base map from Breath of the Wild, making the game feel like glorified DLC. While the game has won over a lot of people, some are still displeased. A lot of the game's structure is still very similar: its tutorial sequence is almost beat-for-beat the same; the returning shrines and korok seeds; major dungeons in the same regions the Divine Beasts were; and the story is once again mostly relegated to memories.
  • Within the game itself, every cutscene that plays when Link and his companion acquire a secret stone plays out exactly the same, just with the characters swapped out and some minor differences in dialogue. This means that the player has to sit through the same lengthy Infodump four times, with absolutely nothing new revealed after the first time. While this was born out of the game's non-linearity so that the dungeons could be completed in any order, the developers could have had the foresight to include an alternate abridged version of the cutscene that would play instead if the player had already completed a previous dungeon.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Like they would really leave Zelda trapped as a mindless dragon for all time with no way to change back after all her character development and being the person the franchise is named after.
• Love to Hate: In just a few days after the game's release, Ganondorf's portrayal has been heavily praised by fans as one of the best video game villains of the year and the best version of Ganon since The Wind Waker, due to his brutal, sadistic, and Ax-Crazy nature.
• Magnificent Bastard: Misko the Great Bandit. See here for details.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Due to Tulin's really helpful abilities, in regards both his wind gusts which helps a lot in exploration, and constantly landing headshots in combat while assisting Link which can cause a hefty amount of stunning and damage to enemies, the fanbase has started to see Tulin in this light, with many people stating he's pretty much the most reliable and more powerful of Link's allies and praising feats he's performed in their playthroughs.
  • In the game's speedrun, a trick is used that skips the Boss Rush prior to fighting Ganondorf, which as a side effect creates the amusing visual bug of Colgera's music and health bar appearing instead of Ganondorf's. Plenty of jokes about Colgera usurping Ganondorf as the game's real villain ensues.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page here.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • While Tulin's been seen as a Memetic Badass, some people have also begun to see him as a bit unhinged, as he tends to enter attack mode the moment enemies enter his range, meaning he could very well cause heavy trouble by opening fire on monsters at inopportune times, such as when the player is trying to feed a weakened weapon to a Rock Octorok in order to replenish its durability. As a result, players have begun to joke that Tulin's a Blood Knight who lusts for enemy blood regardless of Link's input, or a Competition Freak who is trying to outdo Link's body count, even at the expense of his plan.
  • Link has also gained this reputation thanks to the great amount of variety and creativity of torture machines/devices that you can build in the game. Poor, poor Koroks are, more often than not, the victims of the player's cruelty. Cue nicknames like "Korok Torture Simulator" or "Korok Space Program".
• Minimalist Run: Like in Breath of the Wild, once the tutorial is over, you can head towards the final dungeon to face off against the final boss. And also like in Breath of the Wild, there's a Boss Rush of every boss whose dungeon wasn't cleared, only Tears of the Kingdom has six boss fights instead of four (the five temple bosses and Phantom Ganon), and there's a fight against the Demon King's Army that always occurs upon reaching the final area, which can reduce Link's already-low max health via Gloom before the Boss Rush even begins. However, a traditional Three-Heart Run is almost impossible due to the required Heart Container needed to complete the prologue. The means to return the Container requires you to go through a very long cave filled with rocks blocking your path; while a shortcut can open up, it requires beating one of the first four dungeons first.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Dragon's Tears memory quest reveals that Ganondorf was just a typical Gerudo warlord who wanted to conquer Hyrule in the traditional way of war. The moment that changed him to the truly evil, monstrous and sadistic Demon King spoken in legends was him murdering Queen Sonia and stealing her secret stone to obtain great power. Even his own people, the Gerudo, turned against him after this betrayal.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The slow, melancholy version of the "Shrine located" jingle that plays for discovering Lightroots in the Depths. While subdued to fit the environment of the underground hellhole that is the Depths, it's still a comforting sound to hear, because it means you can light up a good portion of the map AND de-Gloom any hearts you may have lost along the way.
• Narm:
  • During the Dragon's Tears memory featuring the death of Queen Sonia at Ganondorf's hand, what should be a heartbreaking and extremely dark scene becomes unintentionally comical when the camera lingers on Ganondorf breaking into a Slasher Smile so wide that it stretches his face in a goofy, cartoonish manner.
  • Some of the monsters' new horn designs are more goofy-looking than fearsome. Silver Bokoblins in particular look like they have Christmas decorations on their heads. The Lynel's Saber and Mace Horns look intimidating on their own, but the fact that they have both at once in an asymmetrical fashion just looks a little silly.
• Narm Charm: Ganondorf's deranged grin after killing Queen Sonia is two things: one, absolutely goofy given the sheer exaggerated nature of it, and two, nightmarishly terrifying as it establishes that this isn't simply another Ganondorf, but an explicit murdering Ax-Crazy monster. He takes so much joy in inflicting death for the sake of gaining power that it's effectively a striking look Beneath the Mask at his insanity.
• Nausea Fuel: The sludge that's polluting Zora's Domain, fittingly enough. It's colored puke brown-green, and it's all over the place, infesting the waters. What's worse is that you have to swim through the brownish waters more than a few times while helping the Zora out.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The Depths are dark, foreboding and seem like a daunting task to explore, but they're much less intimidating once you realize that every Lightroot is directly beneath a Shrine on the surface of Hyrule; therefore, if you're having trouble finding Lightroots, you can open up your surface map, locate a shrine, and put a pin directly beneath it. Conversely, if you find a Lightroot, you know that a Shrine must be on the surface directly above it.
  • Gloom Spawn are Nightmare Fuel incarnate with their shrieking, turning the sky blood red, and quickly zeroing in on Link to kill him. If by some miracle Link manages to escape them to high grounds where they can't reach, however, for some reason they just keel over and die, leaving behind a few Dark Clumps for you.
  • The slower-acting-but-deadlier form of Malice is called "Gloom" in English, a name that many players find to be humorously mild for something that's treated with major fear in-game. Other languages use a more fittingly nightmarish name: "Miasma".
• Older Than They Think:
  • It came as a shock to players in the Americas that Tears of the Kingdom is priced at $69.99 USD, a higher price point than the standard $59.99 USD for Nintendo Switch titles. However, Nintendo's European branches similarly priced The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at a premium as well (£59.99/€69,99 compared to £49.99/€59,99) when it launched in 2017, with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate getting the same treatment the following year. With the new standardized $69.99 price that AAA video games followed in The New '20s, this has led to European countries to bringing an equivalent $79.99 USD pricing.
  • This game isn't the first time Link has lost an arm—the The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016) manga had King Bulblin sever Link's arm. However, in the manga it was his left arm and in Tears of the Kingdom it's his right arm. In both cases, the lost arm is restored, though in the manga it was restored very quickly while in Tears of the Kingdom it isn't restored until after the final boss.
  • Ganon using an evil decoy of Zelda is similar to the time he used one spawned from a mirror in the Zelda cartoon, though thankfully he doesn't have to worry about his minions messing up.
  • This isn't the first game where Ganondorf puts on an overly exaggerated facial expression after viciously murdering someone. In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Ganondorf has a similarly deranged Slasher Smile after killing the Sage of Water during his botched execution at Arbiter's Grounds.
• One-Scene Wonder: Koume and Kotake appear as two young Gerudo warriors who were among Ganondorf's followers in the past. They can be seen kneeling before Rauru right behind Ganondorf and are otherwise unrecognizable unless you can read their names (in Hylian) on the chest bands they wear (the same bands their older versions from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time wear over their heads).
• One True Threesome: Good golly! After the previous games had their fair share, this game has taken it even further.
  • Generally speaking, Link-Zelda is the centerpiece for most ships from this game, and one (or any combination) of Paya, Purah, Riju, Mineru, and even Yiga Zelda are added along with them.
  • Link-Sidon-Yona averts the serious amounts of Die for Our Ship flung at Yona after Link-Sidon's popularity from Breath of the Wild by simply making them a polycule.
  • Rauru-Sonia-Zelda occasionally shows up, averting Incest Yay despite Zelda being their descendant by being their incredibly distant descendant.
• Popular with Furries:
  • While it's not entirely clear whether the Zonai are supposed to be goats, foxes, rabbits, dragons, or some combination thereof, furries immediately fell in love with their designs.
  • Despite the form being treated as tragic due to Zelda losing all sense of self in it, a lot of furries have lovingly embraced Zelda's Light Dragon form in this game and have made designs and art of an anthropomorphized version of her.
• Quicksand Box: As massive as the game is and with as many things to do as it offers, once players leave the Great Sky Island, they can go anywhere and do anything within the game's limits. While the game does provide objectives for the main story, the sheer amount of content is still quite daunting and can easily leave players overwhelmed with options. The game's solution to this is to dripfeed that content to you, teaching you the new powers on the Great Sky Island, providing you with four major objectives on the surface, and then adding to it with the Depths quest with Robbie and all the content it offers.
• Ron the Death Eater: Rhondson gets this from some people for accepting her five year old daughter leaving home at an early age to go live in some place she has never been to, Gerudo Town. Many condemned her as an *Abusive Parent for allowing her daughter to do this at a young age, in spite of the sadness it brings to Mattison and her father, not helped by seeing Mattison's thoughts in her diary. This ignores the fact she clearly loves her daughter and thinks this is a good experience for her, and is simply part of Gerudo culture and law, not out of cruelty. Plus, Gerudo Town is shown to have a nanny of sorts on hand who looks after the young children in school there anyways.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • The breakable weapons mechanic, while still prevalent in this game, is mitigated somewhat by allowing players to use the Fuse ability to enhance one weapon's durability, in addition to making it stronger when fused with other materials.
  • While the cooking in Breath of the Wild was embraced by players, one grievance was that it was very difficult to remember what combinations created certain kinds of food, and how to replicate something they've made. This game allows players to look up the recipes of what each ingredient can help make, and can gather them all at once with a button press to streamline the process.
  • Many Breath of the Wild players complained about how the effects of rain would frequently make it more frustrating to climb things than needed, especially since it's so unpredictable as a weather effect. This game rectifies this by allowing the player to craft elixirs that reduce how often you slip while climbing wet surfaces, and an armor set can be acquired which bestows the same effect and when upgraded to reach its set bonus completely prevents slipping. Additionally, the vehicle-crafting system provides alternative means in many circumstances to climbing.
  • Some players were disappointed that the previous game limited Link's interaction with the New Champions on a gameplay level to helping them take down each area's Divine Beast, before said Champion leaves you to trek through the dungeon alone. This game not only has the Champions accompany Link to each new temple they come across, but they also help him traverse through the area and fight enemies/the boss along the way. Furthermore, completing each temple helps unlock each Champion's Sage abilities, which they bestow upon Link to allow him to call upon them whenever he needs their abilities.
  • Breath of the Wild was criticized for having several pieces of unique equipment, weapons and even animal companions (Epona and Wolf Link) which could only be unlocked by scanning various Zelda-related Amiibo. This created a steep paywall for said unique content, as the price for acquiring every Amiibo needed to unlock all of those the items was many times more than the price of the actual game. In this game you can still unlock unique items by scanning the Amiibo, but almost all of those items can also be found hidden in the game world. The only items exclusive to Amiibos are some of the paraglider fabrics, which are purely cosmetic.
• Salvaged Story:
  • Many fans who played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild were disappointed to see Calamity Ganon portrayed as little more than a mindless Generic Doomsday Villain and Eldritch Abomination that had little personality of its own outside of wanting to destroy all of Hyrule, considering his human form was once a highly intelligent schemer and even his beast form displays varying signs of sentience. Tears of the Kingdom rectifies this area of weakness by not only bringing Ganondorf back, but also giving him an active role as the Big Bad in both the present and past, and recontextualizing Calamity Ganon as a mere offshoot of him that leaked out during his imprisonment, thus establishing Ganondorf as the Greater-Scope Villain of BOTW. Additionally, the game fleshes out Ganondorf's character as a truly despicable villain that players would want to eagerly beat rather than ignore in favor of exploration, like with Calamity Ganon.
  • The four "modern Champions" in Breath of the Wild^note Sidon, Yunobo, Teba and Riju were often criticized for being underdeveloped or overshadowed by their predecessors. Despite playing pivotal roles in helping Link reclaim the Divine Beasts and defeat Ganon, they lack any official titles like the Champions have in recognition of this, and their roles in the story are sidelined as soon as they finish helpling Link access each Divine Beast. Many people felt that they came across as "backup" or "runner-up" Champions instead of heroes in their own right. Here, most of them^note With the exception of Teba, whose son Tulin takes his place are given more prominence as Sages, with arcs that focus entirely on them instead of having to share screentime with the older Champions, unique powers that they bequeath to Link after he finishes their dungeon, and even have several Awesome Moments as they fight alongside Link at various points in the story.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • While Fuse is a pretty useful ability overall, its loop can be rather annoying. You need to open the menu (either the "quick select" or normal menus), select the items to be fused, drop the item, and then properly fuse the selected items in front of you for each individual fusion. This is fine if you just want to create an improvised weapon for an immediate situation, but it's quite the time-waster if you're trying to make several at once.
  • While faster individually than Fusing melee weapons and shields, arrow fusion and material throwing are more tedious in terms of merely selecting the desired Fusing item. Unlike Fusing melee weapons and shields, arrow fusion and material throwing are only accessible with the "quick select" menu, forcing the player to scroll through a very long line that contains every single material Link has plus the Zonai parts, making it a long process to search for a desired item and easy to scroll past it when found. The game attempts to mitigate this by having a "Most Used" sort, but many players would rather have the option to assign certain materials as favorites like Autobuild instead of having to "train" the sort to gel with their playstyle or experimentation.^note The game at least offers a workaround by setting the material sort to "Most Used" and repeatedly selecting the desired material without shooting an arrow, though it requires repeated button presses. What's more, unlike Breath of the Wild, you have to repeatedly select an arrow fusion for every single arrow you shoot, which many bow-favoring players find annoyingly interruptive to the game.
  • The Sage powers have their uses, but activating them in combat and foot exploration is surprisingly clunky. Unlike each of the Champion abilities being assigned a specific button action, the Sage powers now have to be activated by pressing A on the Sage character or their spirit avatar, which has independent following AI that means the Sage could be too far or too close. This makes it harder to activate a specific Sage power when you want it, and all too easy to prompt them when you don't. The Sage of Lightning in particular, with her erratic wide running pattern, embodies both extremes of inconvenience. In effect, this means that the Sage of Wind's ability is by far the most convenient, as he auto-follows Link for activation while gliding. This leaves many players scratching their heads as to why the other Sages couldn't have had their own situations or button prompts that make them auto-follow Link.
  • As an addendum to the above entry, the Sage of Spirit's construct might be even more egregious in terms of usefulness. Its main gimmick is that it's a mech that Link can ride to avoid gloom areas in the Depth, attach materials and Zonai equipment for arms or back and fight independently too. The problems are what sets it back. Despite being able to speed it up with a fan or such on its back, the mech is a big, clunky machine that is difficult to control and still runs on your Zonai battery, including any other potential Zonai weapons too. The weapons attached to its arms and back will break eventually, and if you're in a spot where replacing them isn't an option, the Zonai Mech isn't going to be helpful at all. What's more is that the control scheme for the Mecha is radically different from regular gameplay, meaning the player is likely to mix up the attacking and dismounting buttons while controlling it. Its main functional use is in the Depths and even then, there are other faster and reliable ways of traversing the Depths than the Sage's Mech, rendering it more trouble than it's usually worth. At the least, if there's nowhere else to jump off from, Link can use the mech as a quick way of attaining bullet time for precise firing.
  • When building your dream home, Grantéson will follow the player around. While useful in theory as it makes it easier to talk to him, in practice it's far more frustrating, as he can get in the player's way of arranging rooms. Also, despite the variety and freedom of placement in the various modular housing parts, it only allows a maximum of fifteen pieces. Despite the fact there are more than fifteen different house parts, you can acquire well over one-hundred pieces, and the plot for the house gives far more space than fifteen pieces require, making fifteen seem like an arbitrarily small limit. Lastly, there is a vertical limit on your house, so even with those fifteen pieces, you still cannot build your house above a certain height.
  • The fact that Zonai Wings and Balloons disappear after being in mid-air for only a minute has caused headaches for the engineering side of the playerbase; while they can cover vast distances in that time, especially if you're using Fans or Rockets, these are the only Zonai parts (other than Rockets) that disappear after a set amount of time. Most of the playerbase would prefer they don't vanish at all, or at least have a more forgiving timer.
  • While Satori helps you find caves after you offer it a fruit, the pillars of light it summons to mark the caves have several problems: One, the pillars don't differentiate between caves you haven't found and those you have, much less whether or not you have cleared the caves' contents, so after a while you may find yourself going to a cave you have cleared when looking for ones you haven't; Two, the pillars fade as you approach them, which is fine when the cave is right in your face, but a massive hassle if it's obscured above or below you, necessitating you to walk away to see the pillar again then deduce if the cave is above or below you.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • While they may have some merit in the earliest parts of the game when higher-damage horns are scarce, Zonaite weapons are underwhelming overall compared to other non-Starter Equipment weapons. Whereas most other weapon classes have methods to outright double their attack strength, the ostensibly late-game "Mighty" Zonaite weapons merely increase the damage of an attached Construct material or Zonai device by a flat +10 (and the weaker variants only +3 and +5). Even with the strongest Zonai fusion, the Captain IV Horn, it's much more preferable to use it on any other weapon that doubles its strength rather than the Zonaite weapons. Their only other benefit is being weatherproof, and even then you can just use the Lightning Helm to make yourself immune to lightning since the game's strongest weapons are metallic and thus immune to burning. Even the Gnarled Wooden weapons are stronger than them, meaning it's quite feasible to have both metallic and wooden weapons unless you need to save on space. The Zonaite Shields at least avert this by offering a convenient way to power up fused Zonai devices without being unwieldy like Zonaite melee weapons, as well as being the strongest non-metallic shields.
  • The Goron weapons' unique attribute is "Demolisher", which lets them destroy breakable rocks, ore deposits, and Taluses more easily. This would be useful on paper, but unfortunately, there are many different materials that confer said attribute when Fused already. Unless you really want to power up a Cobble Crusher or the Boulder Breaker with a Lynel Saber Horn instead of a Mace Horn for the miniscule damage increase, they are rendered largely redundant.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Even ignoring the usual exaggerations of fanart, a lot of Purah art loves to exaggerate her coat and have it be actively falling off her body, so you can get a better look at her chest and shoulders. Her actual coat, while a bit spacious with the raised collar, is depicted as being pretty comfortably fitted for her.
  • Even if Ganondorf is already pretty well-built in this game, some artists also tend to downplay his visibly wrinkled, middle-aged face to make him physically younger.
  • Fanart of Rauru and Mineru will make their figures fuller than they are in-game, with Rauru often having more-defined muscles and Mineru having a larger chest. Their necks will also typically be shortened to make them more proportional.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: One that emerged early on is seeing how much can be done without acquiring the paraglider from Purah. Thanks to the upgraded Glide Set having a set bonus that negates falling damage and the abundance of Zonai devices that allow you to glide or otherwise alter your trajectory, people have managed to do everything from completing all the Temples including the Spirit Temple, fully explore the Depths, and acquire the Master Sword.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • The game is overall harder than Breath of the Wild as enemies also use combined weapons and puzzles are more complex. Meanwhile, even with upgraded gear, the damage you take is substantially higher; it's not uncommon to hear even kitted-out players ready for a fight going down in two or three solid hits. On the other hand, the maximum Heart Containers you can get is increased to 40, which includes two more Heart Containers that bosses drop, which can increase the number of hits a player can take should they manage to do enough Shrines to max them out.
  • Stealth gameplay in particular took a massive Nerf, as enemies are now a lot more alert and can detect you from increased distances. The Puffshroom does allow you to do stealth attacks at any time (even allowing repeat stealth attacks), but it's nearly required to pull one off now in the first place. In addition, stealthing bosses like Gleeoks is now next to impossible, as they detect you immediately with little chance or time to prepare yourself, and their attacks are insanely accurate, necessitating a face-on battle.
• She Really Can Act: Patricia Summersett's performance as Zelda was generally seen as one of the weaker parts of Breath of the Wild's English release; while she significantly improved in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, she absolutely shines here. In particular, her performance as a Zelda-disguised Phantom Ganon, speaking in outright reverence of the Blood Moon, is downright chilling.
• Ship Mates: Some Link/Sidon shippers who didn't immediately declare open season on Sidon's fiancée Yona have taken to pairing her off with Zelda, or simply making her, Sidon and Link a throuple instead.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Some fans have taken to shipping Paya with the head of the Zonai Survey Team, Tauro. This is largely because they spend a lot of time standing near each other in Kakariko Village and both are facinated by the Ring Ruins... plus many fans just find their visual contrast rather cute. That said, while they're friendly enough in their limited interactions seen in-game, there's nothing at all in canon to suggest they're interested in each other romantically.
• Shocking Moments: At the end of the game:
  • At first, it seems like Demon King Ganondorf's health bar will stretch to the usual length for bosses, only for to begin stretching so far, it almost reaches the side of the screen.
  • Seeing Ganondorf flurry rushing Link tends to catch many players off-guard.
• Signature Scene:
  • Link being overwhelmed by Ganondorf's malice, which destroys the Master Sword and renders him weakened, a clear sign of how big of a threat the Demon King is going to be in comparison to Calamity Ganon.
  • Link reaching his hand out to Zelda as they are separated and failing to do so at the end of the opening act. Likewise for its reuse after the fight against the Demon Dragon, only with Link succeeding in grabbing Zelda's hand in a fitting Book Ends for the game.
  • Ganondorf killing Queen Sonia and letting out a deranged smile is this in two ways; one to show just how much of a bloodthirsty monster he is and the other for being the game's most prominent meme for how many considered said smile a bit too comical and distracting for the scene it's set in.
• Simple, yet Awesome: The "Hoverbike", a Zonai creation that only requires 2 fans and a seat, yet is remarkably maneuverable.
• Special Effect Failure: The Ancient Hero's Aspect, rewarded to players for completing all Shrines, gives Link the appearance of the Ancient Zonai Hero who fought Calamity Ganon. While the chest and leg parts aren't bad looking, the head is certainly more unsettling to look at.◊ It's a bit puzzling as to why, considering that Rauru and Mineru, the other Zonai in the game, both look perfectly fine, but the wide-open round eyes and lack of facial animation make the model feel less alive. It may simply be a limitation of the game's armor system, but regardless, more than a few fans have been disappointed, considering the requirements to get it and the novelty of being able to play as a Zonai.
• Spiritual Licensee: Just as the previous game was reminiscent of Princess Mononoke, this game's aerial setting and ancient machines has been compared to another Hayao Miyazaki film, Castle in the Sky.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Zora's Domain getting covered in sludge feels pretty similar to Super Mario Sunshine, and even the Sludge Like is quite a lot like a boss fought in that game. The cephalopod threat generating the sludge also recalls Gooper Blooper.
  • More broadly speaking, the use of Ultrahand to make vehicles from Zonai devices instantly made a good portion of the playerbase remember Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and its own extensive vehicle building mechanics.
• Superlative Dubbing: While the English dub of BOTW had a lukewarm reception overall, the dub of TOTK is considered a vast improvement, with many of the returning voice actors, especially Zelda's voice actress Patricia Summersett, settling more comfortably into their roles and delivering stronger and more emotional performances. The new voice actors have also been well-received; Matthew Mercer's Ganondorf is often singled out as a particular highlight, as he delivers a menacing timbre as the Demon King throughout his various forms and already had (albeit unofficial) experience with the character portraying him in live action in There Will Be Brawl.
• That One Boss: While merely a colossal pain in the ass to well-prepared players, Queen Gibdo is still the most challenging of the first four dungeon bosses. On top of having the Gibdos' usual immunity to non-elemental weapons, her movements are wild and erratic, and she can fire a startlingly accurate beam attack at you from a great distance. To make matters worse, Queen Gibdo also comes with several Gibdo hives, which will spawn a constant horde of Gibdos and Moth Gibdos to distract you, and these require multiple uses of Riju's finicky "lightning arrow" ability to be destroyed. Even if you manage to score a direct hit on the Queen herself, she's more difficult to stun than the other bosses, and can easily catch you off guard by attacking you with a Spread Shot of sand tornadoes if you get too close to her. Though nowhere near as awful a Difficulty Spike as Thunderblight Ganon, Queen Gibdo still carries on the Gerudo tradition of truly nerve-wracking dungeon bosses.
• That One Level:
  • The Fire Temple is a scorching, multilevel Underground City with numerous split paths and a buttload of crisscrossing mine cart tracks. While there are certainly ways to cheese the temple if you understand the game's mechanics, many newer players or those inexperienced with traditional Zelda dungeon design tend to find themselves getting lost in its sprawling, maze-like layout.
  • Basically any Proving Grounds Shrine. You remember Eventide Island's shrine quest in Breath of the Wild and how having all of your gear taken away was a novel idea? Proving Grounds Shrines take that idea and drive it into the ground. While you get some starting gear, these shrines are complete pains in the ass because of how much damage even a low-level Soldier Construct does to a naked Link, and that said starting weapons are at best flimsy. One particularly rough example is Eutoum Shrine in Hebra; it's meant to be a Stealth-Based Mission, but the constructs have overtuned detection AI and since you can't use any stealth-enhancing food (unless you eat it before entering) or equipment, it just turns into a combat shrine where you have Constructs swarm you instead. Lastly, whereas in BotW Eventide Island you can still use Champion powers and have access to the remote bomb thus you are never truly defenseless, there is no offensive ability among the arm powers and you cannot use Sage powers in the shrine, adding weapon management into all the stress. The one positive shared between them is that they can be revisited with all your gear available and all the enemies and miscellaneous items respawned, making them great for grinding for Zonai materials, arrows, and fusion materials for your arrows. Additionally, if you make some stat-enhancing food and eat it before entering the shrine, the effect will follow you in, letting you compensate for your lack of equipment for a limited time.
  • Kudanisar Shrine in the Gerudo region. One of the most irritating shrines in the entire game, period, Kudanisar Shrine tasks you with building bridges with scarce, far-away planks of wood on shifting sands through which you can't dash. The problem? Said sand is always flowing in one direction to a death trap of ceiling spikes. Because the sand flows, so do the bridges, and you barely have time to arrange the bridges in time to at least leap and float with the paraglider for the shortest of distances until you reach your destination. Then the difficulty is ramped up with an entire, literal sea of flowing sand. Activating a switch, the ball you need to access the panel for the Blessing of Light is flung all the way to the opposite end of the sea of sand, forcing you to use a sled vehicle to get to the end, Ascend, descend on the ball, attach it to another vehicle, and drive all the way back, only to realize the ball is too low to grab. Your solution? Grab one of the planks haphazardly, make it stand up, attach the ball to the tallest point, climb back up via poorly-located stairs and finally grab the ball. Both chests require rather unorthodox solutions, too. One is located all the way near the death trap, hanging from a rope, meaning you have to shoot it down onto one of the wooden boards and recall/ultrahand the board back to safety. The second chest is located on a platform with seemingly no way to access it. You have to place one of the wooden boards vertically against the platform on the side the sand is flowing from to make a makeshift ladder. Lastly, walking in the sand drains your stamina very quickly.
  • Wet caves. Caves are meant to be climbed around to inspect every nook and cranny, specially because the Bubbulfrogs tend to hide in out of sight holes. Wet surfaces are slippery. Unless you want to spend all your Zonai rockets and springs, these caves become an obligatory pin for later. They're nigh impossible to explore until you can get the three levels of Slip Resistance, as even two doesn't make much of a difference. Also, around ninety percent of the caves in the Lanayru Region are wet, including the two that are part of the Sidon main quest. This makes the mission extra difficult if you chose Zora's Domain first, or even second, of the four regions. Or even later if you've been ignoring the Rumors side quests, which are the way to get the Froggy Armor.
• That One Puzzle:
  • The Mayachin Shrine, despite showing up in Hyrule Field and potentially being one of the first shrines the player will see after leaving the Great Sky Island, is annoyingly obtuse. After a short platforming segment, the shrine is completed as soon as you can figure out how to make an enormous rolling boulder hit a distant target. You're supposed to phase an assembly on a stake through the rotating barrel machine and create a makeshift "pinball flipper", a solution so unintuitive that it quickly evolved into a meme.^note The game expects you to notice that the short platforming section is made out of attaching a slab and a stake to the pivot in order to make a paddle, and to then build the same object as the pinball flipper (or just steal this platform and stick it in the spinning barrel). However, this can be the player's first exposure to Zonai stakes (the shrine is even made to be a tutorial for them) and it can be hard to realize they'll attach in the very small spinning barrel. Otherwise, the switch design can be confusing if that hasn't been encountered yet.
  • Iun-Orok Shrine, "The Right Roll", presents two digestible puzzles where you roll a ball and then two glued balls down slopes into pressure switches... and then provides a final, very obtuse puzzle where three balls of different sizes are provided next to a curving downhill slope that ends at a switch. The balls can be glued in a line in a couple of different combinations to weight them, so they roll down the curve. But it can be very hard to figure out the right configuration and achieve this effect, especially since almost-right assemblies can roll forward off the slope and convince the player they're not on the right path. Player consensus for the solution has instead become "glue the balls together in a line, carry them to the end of the path, and let them fall forward so one hits the switch", "Fuse a ball onto a throwing weapon to make it hit that way" or "use a bomb to hit the switch and bypass the puzzle completely".
  • The Addison sign challenge on Mercay Island gives you a bunch of boulders to help stabilize the sign instead of the usual beams and boards. This, combined with the uneven terrain surrounding the sign, makes for a much more challenging puzzle than usual unless you use a Hover Stone capsule.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Addison's ads; they're everything that people complained about the Korok puzzles in the previous game. Except he doesn't give you anything you can't get for yourself like more inventory slots, he's mostly on roads, so he doesn't act like little Easter eggs that reward exploration. More importantly, his puzzles are entirely based around the physics of the game, so they're often far more difficult to get right than most Korok puzzles, often needing multiple attempts (which also means redoing the whole dialogue loop). At least with the - similar in purpose - new Korok Escort Missions, you can exploit Video Game Cruelty Potential for fun, while you can't do anything to Addison. While a good source of Sleepover Tickets, the ultimate reward - Paraglider fabric with a picture of Hudson - is something of a letdown unless you really like Tarrey Town.
  • Gaining more energy wells is a grind. Link starts the game with one full slot and seven empty slots on his belt. Each slot takes three energy wells and each energy well requires 100 crystallized charges while each crystallized charge requires three pieces of Zonaite. That means to obtain 21 energy wells, players must gain 2100 crystallized energy charges and gain 6300 pieces of Zonaite before that. And this just gets players halfway to the maximum amount of energy wells. Even with Yiga Clan hideouts and the Master Kohga sidequest, which pay out in crystallized charges, this requires players to attack dozens of mines guarded by strong creatures and seek out veins of Zonaite in the depths. Plus, hammer-type weapons eventually break, so many will need to be created and destroyed. Yunobo's power enables you to break open ore sources for free, but also tends to send the resulting materials flying a good distance away and thus forces you to spend more time gathering than you would otherwise. However, there is one workaround - there is an Alchemy Construct at the Abandoned Central Mine (where Autobuild is unlocked) that will sell five Large Crystallized Charges (which count as 20 Crystallized Charges each) per in-game day for three Large Zonaite each. Link will be given one Large Zonaite for completing the associated Side Quest, which can be multiplied using one of the discovered Duplication glitches.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The popular Gerudo Outfit (Link's Wholesome Crossdresser garb he used to infiltrate Gerudo Town in Breath of the Wild) is not in the game (due to Link not needing it since Riju made him an exception to the "no voe" rule). Several people genuinely miss the Gerudo Outfit for reasons ranging from the fact that it provided a method of queer expression in a major video game, to some people thinking that it just made Link look attractive.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Rauru's ghost appears at several points on the Great Sky Island, providing exposition on several aspects of the lost Zonai civilization in a similar way to the Old Man in Breath Of The Wild. However, once you complete the prologue, he vanishes, and all his subsequent appearances are in flashbacks and the epilogue, where he has no dialogue. Considering how much of the game you spend exploring Zonai ruins in the Sky and the Depths, it might have been nice if he had stuck around a little longer.
  • Some (such as this article) feel that Ganondorf himself feels wasted, as despite him being the clear Big Bad of the story and leaving a big impression during the intro level, he ultimately doesn't have much presence or screentime during the story proper, only appearing during the Phantom Ganon boss fight at Hyrule Castle via Astral Projection and during the final battle itself. Even much of the havoc befalling the regional tribes are caused by the aforementioned Phantom Ganon, who acts more like a near-mindless puppet rather than an extension of Ganondorf himself. As for his appearance in the Dragon's Tear memories, they also don't do much to expand upon his characterization; while they introduce a new Blood Knight characterization who feels the world "lost its courage" (an angle removed from the English dub), they ultimately retread a lot of the old ground of the previous Ganondorf, particularly Ocarina of Time, without delving into how Ganondorf grew to be how he is. While many still admit that this incarnation of Ganondorf is better than how several games in the series have handled him, they still lament the missed potential he has on his own.
  • Sonia, being Zelda's ancestor, would have created sizable potential for interaction between the Queen and Zelda, but she appears in all but half of the flashback cutscenes, only to be killed off by Ganondorf in order to explain how he became the Demon King. Considering how, even after death, Rauru still has time on-screen, it would seem there's adequate room for her character development.
  • Hardcore fans who recognize Koume and Kotake during the Dragon's Tears memories have lamented that they don't serve any role in the game aside from being background cameos. Considering how the two of them are depicted as being Ganondorf's adopted mothers and served as a formidable boss in previous games, the fact that this game doesn't explore their relationship with the Demon King and the Gerudo as a whole here is quite disappointing.
  • Shipping hatred aside, Yona has somewhat squandered potential due to being a Zora hailing from another kingdom of Zoras. While an interesting fact on its own, this doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things since you don't visit or learn anything more about said place. Yona herself only gets a brief mention of her and Sidon sharing a mutual attraction since childhood, and what little glimpses of her personality the player gets tend to only inspire curiosity that's never given any real payoff.
  • The original Sages from Hyrule's founding seem interesting, as they are the predecessors of both the modern-day Sages and the four Champions of the Divine Beasts. They wield the same weapons as the Champions, and they even wear masks that hint a connection or similar nomenclature to the Divine Beasts. However, practically nothing is revealed about the original Sages other than their blood connection to the modern Sages (and by proxy three out of four Champions).
  • After Zelda is revealed to be a puppet of Ganondorf, the player might expect a unique boss fight against this fake Zelda, akin to the memorable Puppet Zelda battle in Twilight Princess. Unfortunately, Zelda's guise is immediately dropped, and the player instead only gets a battle with the recurring miniboss Phantom Ganon. The one redeeming factor to it is that you have to fight waves of 5 of them at a time, each time using different weapons.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The reveal that Zelda traveled to the distant past and then became the Light Dragon to restore the Master Sword is a momentous and shocking reveal. However, many fans feel that certain aspects of the reveal's handling have wasted potential.
  • Other than being the method to retrieve the blade itself, very little is done with Zelda's transformation during the present day. Firstly, if you have completed the Geoglyph quest beforehand, there is no way to inform any of the Sages or settlement leaders that the Zelda causing the regional phenomena is likely a fake, although this can be excused by the game's nonlinear nature, and once the Phantom Ganon masquerading as Zelda is defeated, they eventually realize that she's been sent to the past. But even after this happens, there is still no way to inform most important characters about Zelda's transformation into a dragon. Not even Traysi, the newspaper editor actively leading the effort to investigate Zelda's whereabouts, can be informed after her questline is completed. The only character privy to the Geoglyph reveals is Impa, and even then she doesn't justify the lack of publicity to the information by telling Link to keep it a secret, only musing if there is a way to change Zelda back. The rest of the Sages and Purah are informed eventually, as shown in the bonus ending, but it's offscreen and well after Zelda has transformed back to her true self, meaning they never react to the prospect of her eternally remaining a dragon.
  • While this is admittedly a player-dependent issue, several fans feel that the ability to view the Geoglyph story out of chronological order makes the story itself much less compelling, as it is very likely the player might view the more momentous scenes such as Ganondorf taking the Secret Stone of a murdered Queen Sonia before less momentous ones such as Sonia mentoring Zelda on how to use her Recall powers. Furthermore, the penultimate tear has flashbacks towards several of the previous memories, which makes finding the previous memories feel much less rewarding. While the game admittedly shows the "proper" order to get the tears on the walls of the map chamber in the Forgotten Temple, the game makes little effort to draw attention to this fact, making it very unlikely the player will immediately know the chronological order of the memories.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Fans were not expecting the return of the Gleeok monsters, whose last appearance in the series was in 2007's Phantom Hourglass.
  • One of the boss monsters (and major narrative players) is Phantom Ganon, who— if you don't count the four Blight Ganons from Breath of the Wild— hasn't been seen in a mainline Zelda game since his appearance as a boss in The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures in 2004, a nineteen-year gap.
• Unfortunate Character Design: While the shrines aren't "characters" per se, the design of the shrine entrances quickly became infamous on the internet due to them happening to resemble the very infamous (and extremely NSFW) "goatse" image. The fact that the Zonai dragon sculptures surrounding the entrance incidentally look a bit like hands when viewed from the front does not help with the comparisons.
• The Un-Twist: Upon uniting the five Sages, Purah speculates that it's unlikely that Ganondorf would still be under Hyrule Castle, seemingly setting up a mystery as to where he's supposed to be hiding. After working with Josha and concluding Master Kohga's Side Adventure chain, it turns out that Ganondorf is indeed still underneath Hyrule Castle.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: The Zonai who appeared in the trailers was thought by more than a few fans to be female, probably on account of their long, abundant hair. Said Zonai is actually the first King of Hyrule, Rauru.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Upon the initial reveal of the title, a few people thought that "tears" referred to "rips." Nintendo later clarified to Eurogamer that "tears" is the one in "teardrops".^note This is only a problem in the English spelling system, since "tear" as in "teardrops" and "tear" as in "rip" have different pronunciations, but have the same spelling. The Japanese title, which is the same as the English one, is written in katakana and unambiguously refers to the former. The game itself confirms it is "teardrops" via one of the main quests called "The Dragon's Tears" which involves you seeking a filled-in teardrop-shaped part on the geoglyphs to view a Memory.
• Vocal Minority: A very small, yet very loud contingent of disgruntled Zelda fans took to the internet on the game's release, complaining about how Tears of the Kingdom is "just $70 DLC" and how TotK and its predecessor are "not Zelda", with many even attempting to review bomb it on Metacritic at launch without even playing it. This minority was quickly stifled once average consumers got their hands on the game and actually played it for themselves, with positive word-of-mouth and critical acclaim leading to the usual high sales and general audience adoration that the series is known for.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: With its chains over Link's bare chest and animal-like mask, the Miner's Set looks more like BDSM gear than any kind of practical workwear. The glow-in-the-dark parachute pants are pretty silly-looking too.

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