If there was ever a game designed to frustrate speedrunners, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom might be it.
By the time you, the player, descend from the floating sky islands that comprise the game’s lengthy tutorial and reach the overworld of Hyrule, you’re practiced enough to know that any tower, mountain or chasm is (in some way, shape or form) traversable. Imagine, then, the lure of climbing any of the peaks or gliding through any valleys in your immediate vicinity. Even if that landform you just surmounted didn’t directly deliver you some kind of upgrade or valuable resource, odds are it at least brought you to some greater vantage point from which the rest of Hyrule — and a likely dozen other points of interest positioned strategically within view — seems tantalizingly within reach.
Like 2017’s Breath of the Wild before it, Tears of the Kingdom continues to rely primarily on this urge to see what’s around the next corner of the map, and it’s a delightful bane for reviewers like myself bent on seeing as much of what it has to offer as quickly as possible.
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