Comparing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is a Unique Conundrum That Zelda Fans Have Never Faced Before

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said that you can never walk in the same river twice, but that is exactly what some fans and critics argued that Nintendo tried to do with Tears of the Kingdom. Six years after reinventing the Zelda series with Breath of the Wild, Nintendo released a sequel that took place in the same game world, used the same story structure, and borrowed much of the design philosophy from its trailblazing predecessor. Nintendo’s direction for Tears of the Kingdom was a bit surprising given that the company had long ignored conventional wisdom about sequels and successors. While the two Nintendo 64 Zelda games (Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask) were built using many of the same design assets, the two games feel remarkably distinct from one another. While there have been other Zelda sequels, these games are distinguishable based on their game design concepts, their hardware differences, and even the decades between releases.

The similarities between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (world map, core mechanics, and narrative structure) have resulted in a set of important questions that Zelda fans have to ask about the two games: how do we compare Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom against each other? How do we rank these games in the wider context of the Zelda series? How much credit should be given to a sequel that so closely resembles its predecessor? The debates and discussions surrounding Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom essentially come down to the question of what it means for a game to be a sequel, and what form a sequel should take. Should a sequel stick to the formula that has proven to work, should a sequel iterate or perfect ideas in its predecessor, or should a sequel break away from the design concepts established in its predecessor? How you answer these questions may hold the answer to how you feel about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

 

Exploration and Innovation

One of the biggest questions that arises when discussing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how much a player values innovation versus iterative design. Breath of the Wild is hailed as a landmark title for the Zelda series because the game discarded many of the design conventions and gameplay mechanics that previously dominated the series. Nintendo’s use of the “Triangle Rule” in Breath of the Wild, where the developers placed different visual landmarks and varying levels of topography to encourage exploration, makes exploring the vast open world feel rewarding and surprising. Nintendo used the Sheikah Towers to provide high points on the map from which players could see across large spaces. This smart decision means that players would almost always be able to see new points of interest or unexplored spaces. The “Triangle Rule” gave Nintendo a way to feed player curiosity, and the Paraglider is a perfect compliment for the “Triangle Rule” because it provides players with a way to fearlessly pursue their curiosity.

Tears of the Kingdom expands on the methods of exploration in Breath of the Wild, while also adding new areas to explore. The 2023 game expanded on the idea of using towers as a compass for exploration by letting players blast into The Sky from any Skyview Tower. Even in the vast heavens, Nintendo still adheres to the “Triangle Rule” by providing a variety of interesting landmarks at different levels of altitude. Even if the player meant to skydive back to the surface, they might find an interesting floating island and take a detour before resuming their descent. Nintendo also cleverly drops pieces of rocks that Link can ride to The Sky using Recall; this is another method players can use to reach faraway locations or explore the skies above Hyrule. One of the areas that does not always use Nintendo’s Triangle Rule effectively is The Depths. The Fire Temple is a great example of how Nintendo can use enormous landmarks and topography to frame the player’s path forward, but that is the exception rather than the norm in The Depths. Usually, the player is moving towards identical Lightroots or they are moving with no obvious destination in mind. Compared to the intricate design of the Surface and Sky, exploration in The Depths feels clumsy and imprecise.

The sense of wonder of exploration has been a key part of the Zelda series since its beginning, and Nintendo’s decision to reuse Breath of the Wild‘s game world in Tears of the Kingdom offers a unique barrier to the joys of exploration. The reuse of the game world makes sense since we can trace the origins of Tears of the Kingdom back to Breath of the Wild DLC. Keeping this in mind, Nintendo’s methods of differentiating Tears of the Kingdom’s world from its predecessor have more to do with changing existing locations rather than radically altering geography. Without a new world map, Nintendo had to make revisiting familiar towns and villages interesting, and Tears of the Kingdom relies on players desire to return to old places to fuel exploration. For many players, this is a different feeling from the one in Breath of the Wild, where there was so much mystery about what landmarks and villages were waiting to be discovered.

Lurelin Village, Kakariko Village, and Hateno Village illustrate how Nintendo tried to differentiate key locations in Tears of the Kingdom. Instead of being the peaceful seaside village, Lurelin Village is a stronghold for enemies, and restoring the village is a multi-part side quest. Kakariko Village has new visual landmarks (ancient ruins) that will likely draw the eye of observant players. The emergence of Cece’s shop and the mushroom hats in Hateno Village immediately telegraph that changes have occurred in the village, and there are a variety of new side quests within the area that culminate with the Hateno election. Additionally, Nintendo created 147 caves that are scattered across Hyrule, and these all give players reasons to explore the overworld. However, as these two games fade in our memories, the similarities between the two games may make it harder to clearly remember the differences between the two versions of each town or region. Which version of Kakariko Village includes those side quests? Which version of Gerudo Town includes that secret entrance?

While Tears of the Kingdom adds dozens of caves and wells to explore along with more involved side-quests, it is hard to recreate the pure thrill and excitement of exploration in Breath of the Wild. The tools and act of exploring may be more enjoyable in Tears of the Kingdom, but the game often lacks the “wow” factor that made Breath of the Wild so impressive at launch. Stumbling onto a new cave is not the same as making your way through an entirely new region, and a great deal of the exploration in Tears of the Kingdom is entirely optional or outside of the main quests. When you break it down logically with all factors considered, it may seem like the exploration is better in Tears of the Kingdom, yet the emotional experience of exploring a vast open world for the first time may give Breath of the Wild an edge for some players.

 

Abilities and Tools

Some of the most dynamic changes from Breath of the Wild to Tears of the Kingdom are the set of abilities available to the player. Breath of the Wild included a set of abilities called Runes which include Magnesis, Remote Bombs, Stasis, Cryonis, and Camera. Magnesis and Stasis are the two most versatile abilities in the game; these abilities allow the player to interact with the various objects with tremendous freedom. Though there are only a few Runes, they were (at launch) the most versatile tools to ever appear in a Zelda game, and these items scale extremely well for different groups of players. Novice players could use Stasis and Magnesis in straightforward ways to complete puzzles or to traverse dangerous areas, but advanced players could use the tools to bypass entire parts of a Shrine or build flying machines. In the years following Breath of the Wild‘s launch, it has been amazing seeing how creative players have used the Runes to manipulate the various systems in the game.

In Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo went even further with its toolset. Ultrahand is a clear evolution of what Nintendo prototyped with Magnesis in Breath of the Wild. Ultrahand is a remarkable gameplay achievement that changes the way that many players interact with a game world. Crucially, Ultrahand can be used for traversal, puzzle solving, or combat. Players can use the ability to glue a variety of items together and build complex working machines using spare parts and Zonai Devices. The amount of freedom that Ultrahand offers players is striking, even in a video game market flooded with open-world games. Other abilities like Ascend and Fuse are impressive tools that differentiate Tears of the Kingdom from its predecessor. Fuse creates more interactivity between items and weapons, with every collectible item having its own distinct properties that can be combined with weapons. Ascend allows the player to move vertically incredibly quickly, which cuts down on the climbing required. Additionally, Ascend helps the player quickly move from The Depths to The Surface.

While Breath of the Wild was an explosion of new ideas, Ultrahand and the other abilities featured in Tears of the Kingdom feel like the second-generation model. Part of what made Breath of the Wild so well-received was its deliberate choice to abandon or discard Zelda traditions, and the game deserves a lot of credit for abandoning ideas that had become somewhat restrictive. Tears of the Kingdom doubles down on player choice and creativity by giving the player incredible freedom when interacting with the game world. For those players who thrived in the unusual creative spaces allowed by Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom offers even more opportunities to experiment and explore. For those players who missed the more straightforward and guided gameplay of previous Zelda titles, Tears of the Kingdom may represent a step in the wrong direction.

While the Runes were an excellent set of tools in Breath of the Wild, it is hard to argue that they are better than abilities like Ultrahand and Recall. However, the feeling of using the respective abilities in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, along with their places in gameplay, do feel different. Because the Runes can interact with a limited number of surfaces and objects, using these abilities does feel more deliberate and calculated in Breath of the Wild. Some Shrines are built squarely around Remote Bombs, Stasis, or Magnesis, respectively. In contrast, using Ultrahand in Tears of the Kingdom feels much more random. Any time a player is unsure of how to solve a puzzle or progress in an area, players are encouraged to use abilities like Ultrahand, Ascend, and Recall.

It can feel at times like these abilities are cheat codes for bypassing puzzles more than they are carefully cultivated tools for solving puzzles. Ultrahand dominates Tears of the Kingdom playthroughs in ways that Runes did not dominate Breath of the Wild runs. While abilities like Ultrahand are clearly more technically impressive than their Breath of the Wild counterparts, Ultrahand becomes a far more complex tool to use because of the multitude of different ways the player can use it in the game world. Some players may prefer the simplicity of the Runes to the far-reaching, all-encompassing abilities like Ultrahand.

 

Combat, Enemies, and Bosses

The combat in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is another area that highlights how similar the two games are. Both games share a set of advanced combat moves that include Perfect Dodge, Parry, and Flurry Rush. Combat is also very flexible and open-ended in both games; players can rush in for close-quarters combat, they can bombard the enemy with a slew of projectiles and items from their inventory, or they can try to use environmental factors like water and fire to their advantage. The combat systems are essentially the same in the two games. If you took a screenshot of Link fighting from both games and put them side by side, it might be difficult to determine what game each screenshot came from.

One of the biggest changes to Tears of the Kingdom was the addition of Fuse. This new ability lets the player combine a base item with another item, material, or monster part. If used effectively, this system allows the player to increase the strength of their weapons or to give them elemental abilities. One of Breath of the Wild‘s least-beloved features was the weapon durability/breakability system. Each weapon and shield had a limit of how much damage it could take before breaking, and there was no way to repair weapons. Battling strong enemies in Breath of the Wild likely means repeatedly losing some of your strongest weapons, and not necessarily having a way to replace them easily. Tears of the Kingdom did not change item durability, but Fuse does make it easier to make stronger weapons and combine weapons. Especially early on, when the player has low inventory slots, combining two low-level weapons is a simple way to get more out of the limited resources available to the player. The more high-level enemies you kill in Tears of the Kingdom, the more valuable materials you have for Fuse, which is less frustrating than the durability loop in Breath of the Wild.

Another way that Tears of the Kingdom benefited from the work created for Breath of the Wild is enemy variety. Tears of the Kingdom has all the enemies from Breath of the Wild (besides Guardians), and it also adds a wealth of new enemies to the game world. The addition of new enemies like Gibdos, Horriblins, Constructs, Aerocuda, Boss Bokoblins, Like-Likes, and Gloom Spawns gives Tears of the Kingdom greater variety in combat encounters, and it helps reduce the feeling that the player was battling the same small collection of enemies repeatedly, a complaint that some players levied at Breath of the Wild. This richer roster of encounters also applies to bosses. Several new overword bosses like Gleeoks, Flux Constructs, and Froxs are introduced in Tears of the Kingdom, and these bosses compliment the existing Talus, Hinox, and Molduga encounters from Breath of the Wild.

At launch, Breath of the Wild’s combat was designed well enough that the developers made little to no changes for Tears of the Kingdom. Breath of the Wild established the blueprint and set up a combat system that worked extremely well. It is obvious the game deserves praise for its flexible and fun combat. But with that said, should Tears of the Kingdom be praised for keeping what already works or criticized for not taking any risks? Fuse is a major addition to the game, and it adds more variety to combat encounters. The new collection of enemies and bosses in Tears of the Kingdom give the game’s combat a level of variety that its predecessor lacks, but is that enough to satisfy our understanding of what a sequel should do or be? Some players may argue that a sequel needs to significantly improve combat or layer on new features, while other players feel that perfecting the previous formula is enough.

 

Stories and Questlines That Mirror Each Other

Nintendo opted to not only reuse the game world of Breath of the Wild, but the company also retained the core structure of Link’s quest from Breath of the Wild to Tears of the Kingdom. In both games, Link is separated from the Master Sword and Princess Zelda, and the player must restore peace to four regions (Rito, Gerudo, Zora, and Goron). The four key tribes have a quest line that requires the player to work with a key figure in the local tribe, complete a dungeon in the region, and defeat a key boss. Nintendo has been committed to giving the player as much freedom as possible, so the different regional quests can be completed in any order; the player can even skip these quests if they want to go directly to the final boss. While Tears of the Kingdom adds some additional main quests after the completion of the four regions, this does little to disguise how clearly Nintendo copied and pasted the quest structure of Breath of the Wild into its sequel.

For Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo makes the questlines more involved than those in Breath of the Wild. With the exception of the Gerudo Region, which required Link to infiltrate the Yiga Clan Hideout, the regional quests of Breath of the Wild have straightforward movement from the respective town to the assault on the Divine Beast. Tears of the Kingdom added more steps before reaching each dungeon. For example, the player has to complete the Ancient Zora Waterworks before going to the Water Temple, and the player has to defend Kara Kara Bazaar and Gerudo Town before reaching the Lightning Temple. Breath of the Wild originated the concept and structure, but Tears of the Kingdom built off it in significant ways. Additionally, Tears of the Kingdom added some new content like the exciting Phantom Ganon duel at Hyrule Castle along with the Construct Factory and Spirit Temple, quests that expand the main narrative beyond the four regions and hunt for the Master Sword. But for many players, this was not enough to differentiate Tears of the Kingdom from its predecessor.

In addition to the similarities between the structure of the main quests, both games use flashback and memory systems to tell their stories. Both games require Link to travel to specific locations to unlock the truth about past events. The numerous similarities between the stories of the two games make it hard to differentiate one from the other. If Breath of the Wild had focused on the past, while Tears of the Kingdom had focused on the present, it might have been easier to discuss which game was more successful. But because the two stories and the memory systems are so similar, it becomes hard to untangle or separate these two stories. Additionally, both stories sideline Zelda for much of their respective narratives, a frustrating feature of the two open-world Zelda games. Tears of the Kingdom creates a better plot explanation for why Zelda is not present in much of the present-day story, but it also took some criticism for being the second straight game to essentially cut Zelda out of the core story.

While one can criticize Tears of the Kingdom for too closely following the narrative design of its predecessor, it is hard to argue that Breath of the Wild‘s story is better than Tears of the Kingdom. Calamity Ganon is one of the least interesting villains in the Zelda series, and the amorphous enemy lacks any real personality or narrative backstory that might help audiences become interested in the foe. In contrast, Tears of the Kingdom‘s Demon King is an arrogant, power-hungry brute that makes an immediate impression on the player. Likewise, Zelda’s absence from Tears of the Kingdom‘s narrative has a more tangible and logical explanation compared to Zelda’s absence in Breath of the Wild. While Breath of the Wild‘s story does have its own emotional moments like Zelda crying in Link’s arms or the awakening of Zelda’s power, the improvements to the villain and Zelda’s role in the story generally push Tears of the Kingdom ahead of its predecessor. Even with some baffling choices by Nintendo (having essentially the same cutscene play after the completion of each temple), Tears of the Kingdom better utilizes its cast of characters to construct a meaningful story.

 

Conclusion — Too Similar Has As Many Issues As Too Different

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will forever be entwined in the memories of Zelda fans. Both games are remarkable achievements in game design, and they are both massive commercial hits. The two games will likely undergo critical reevaluation as the years pass, but it is unclear if one game will retain an advantage over the other as the games age. As we move further from the release of Tears of the Kingdom, it will be interesting to see how new players experience the two games. What will the experience be for players whose first Zelda game is Tears of the Kingdom? For the player starting with Tears of the Kingdom, will Breath of the Wild be a letdown for them? Will it be viewed as a steppingstone to a greater experience?

The debates surrounding Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom get to the core question about what it means for a game to be a sequel, and what form a sequel should take. Did Nintendo make a fundamental error by adhering so closely to the design philosophy and setting created for Breath of the Wild? Should Tears of the Kingdom receive credit for expanding on the player freedom in Breath of the Wild and by transforming some of its rough design concepts into perfected mechanics? The experience of analyzing the two games separately with the same checklist or criteria is intriguing. Tears of the Kingdom has better bosses, better side quests, and a more extensive main quest. Mechanics like Ultrahand, Ascend, Recall, and Fuse push the boundaries of open-world design in amazing ways.

However, when a player starts to examine Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom against each other, taking into account the DNA shared between the two games, it becomes much harder to determine which game (if any) is superior. Most players experienced Breath of the Wild first, and returning to the same world after a six-year wait can make the exploration in Tears of the Kingdom feel less sublime than that of its predecessor. There is nothing quite like the thrill of not knowing what lies beyond each hill, something that cannot be recaptured on a second experience on the same map. The main quests are more involved in Tears of the Kingdom, but the differences between the main quests of the two games are small enough that it is opens Tears of the Kingdom to criticism for following its predecessor too closely. The resounding lesson of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom may be that making two games that are too similar is its own kind of dilemma, and one that will have fans debating the two games for years to come.

What has your experiences with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom been? How do you rank the two games in Zelda history? How do you think opinions about both games will change over time? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!