Tears of the Kingdom is already the best game of all time, say critics

Of course it was expected that Tears of the Kingdom would be well received by critics, but it seems the new game might have surpassed all expectations on review aggregator sites too.

[CrimsonWing69]

I mean, technically it’s aggregate score is lower than BotW, so… something seems contradictory, here.

[porkChop]

They're talking about OpenCritic not Metacritic.

[CrimsonWing69]

My B, I didn’t realize one supersedes the other.

[VincentVanBro]

@CrimsonWing69 who said one supersedes the other? porkChop just clarified that the article was written about the OpenCritic aggregate score, not the Metacritic aggregate score. Its that simple.

[Ezio2048]

Opencritic only has 63 reviews compared to 180+ of BOTW. Its final score and position will be lower than BOTW.

[Babadook7]

It's a bit disingenuous. At this time in BotW's history it was well above the TotK current score. (I think 99 or 98 avg) TotK will probably always be lower in average scores relative to their time of release. I was suspecting exactly this would happen, as it also did with Mask of Mojara which everyone said was better than OoT, despite it having a lower review.

[-Foxtrot]

And regardless what people say BotW wasn’t even the best Zelda game sooooo….

[S2Killinit]

I have to agree. Im definitely picking this up, because… its ZELDA. But personally I wished they moved away from the cell-shaded art direction at some point.

[giovonni]

Right, and there were talks of Botw on the best of all times list, and to me, it fell short way short. To this day the best Zelda of all times is ocarina of time. I feel like the excitement of another Zelda is overexaggerate opinions

[Neonridr]

who cares though? That's up to the person playing it. Personally my favorite Zelda is a Link to the Past. To someone else it's Twilight Princess. Another it's Ocarina.

How can I say I'm more right that someone else's opinion? And furthermore, why would I care enough?

The yarn spinning by the anti-Nintendo crowd is hilarious. It's a good game, let it be. Nothing changes in your world.

[-Foxtrot]

@neon

Maybe you do? I mean my comment has moved you enough to reply

You see someone say

“I think this Zelda game is overrated”

And you then think they've said

“I think this Zelda game is a bad game, it’s terrible”

When quality wasn’t even mentioned, not before saying it just stems from people automatically being anti-Nintendo as some sort of “counter attack”…call people anti Nintendo and hopefully it will undermine their opinion.

I think BotW is a good game

I think TotK is a good game, currently playing now, but no way in hell so I think this is a 10. It’s literally BotW 2.0.

it’s time to go back to traditional Zelda games

[Spenok]

100% this. It was okay, good, but that's about it.

There have been SERIOUSLY better games in the franchise than BOTW. Honestly, as someone who LOVES the franchise so much that I named my daughter Zelda, I believe BOTW was one of the poorest entries in the franchise. Not the worst, but nowhere near the best.

[-Foxtrot]

@TearsoftheSonyBois

Did you really just create account for this article

How sad...

[WelkinCole]

True. Ocarina is still the best imo.

[Jin_Sakai]

It’s lower literally because of one single low score from gfinity that’s a 6/10.

[Flawlessmic]

Played 2 hrs so far, so I only have ultrahand and honestly it's soo cool already the things you can do, it's pretty finicky though.

Greatest game of all time, I mean iv obviously just started, but it's botw but expanded which is a great thing but while I so far loved my initial playtime the whole time I sat there thinking just how much better this game would be running on decent hardware.

After being spoiled with 4k games my switch is super hard to go back to, and while gameplay is king there is a superior version of this game begging to be made.

I can't call a game the greatest of all time while the whole time I'm thinking yes this is great but I know it could be better and I can't that put of my head.

Evwn so i Can't wait to get home and play it the rest of the weekend.

Really should mainline jedi survivor, now that's going on the back burner.

[solideagle]

this can be said to any game to be quite honest with you. Even for Ragnarök, people have said it would have been better as a trilogy. No game is perfect, just enjoy and have fun. Forget about what it could have been and play how the designers/developers intended it to be.

[Flawlessmic]

Ofcourse but in this case, imagine totk looked as good as it played.

With this version of hyrule it would be so insane.

I am enjoying the game more than enough, my comment was around graphics and because games has moved so far from what the switch can do it's natural for me to wish Nintendo had new hardware especially as I been playing on ps5 xsx since they launched

[Crows90]

Nah. Designers didn't Nintendo a lower than 30fps drop at points. He mentions performance while you talk about opinion.

[BrainSyphoned]

Without fixing the tedium of the weapons and cooking systems that's going to be a no. Excited to play it regardless but I know I'm going to be grumbling about that part constantly.

[Zhipp]

The fusion ability is meant to improve the weapon durability problem. How well it works we'll just have to see.

I don't know what you mean by cooking being tedious though. I found the system pretty quick and unintrusive. It's also not really something you had to do if you didn't want to in BOTW, as there were plenty of fruits you could pick up while exploring that would fully restore your health. That in addition to fairies meant you had plenty of options when it came to health and stamina recovery.

[repsahj]

What do you expect? In this kind of news, PS & Xbox fans unite in this opportunity to gank nintendo. XD

[Number1TailzFan]

"Critics say" yeah because people can't have their own subjective enjoyment, best not play anything but Zelda ever then!

I personally get bored of big open worlds. Give me a decent size world with a lot of replayability and a lot of stuff going on and I'd be happier, I'd get bored with the giant deserts.

[883]

Really nailed it there. Well said. Just because we can, does not mean we have to, and it is almost feeling like it compulsory for so many developers.

[883]

Weird to have 1 upvote and 5 down... I was agreeing with Number1TailzFan and just adding that it seems like developers feel some "need" to throw this stuff in. Both his comment and Einhander have a majority of upvotes and I ended up with the inverse. Confused...

[Einhander1971]

Totally agree, sick to death of openworld crap. Even Nintendo have fallen into it. I really don't see the love for aimlessly wondering around. God what happened to awesome Linear games with amazing set pieces, tight gameplay, good stories.

[Kurt Russell]

I just played through Deadspace remake. It felt refreshing to have a smaller, more linear, super detailed environment to explore. I have open world burn-out at the moment... well, apart from Elden Ring.

[lucian229]

game doesnt even have a hard mode once again; probably like the first game it will be 20$ to unlock hardmode

[jambola]

"according to a specific website's critics"
there, fixed the title

[King_Noctis]

Man it is funny that this game get so much hate on this site. The name Tears is really ironic and says it all.

[BlackTar187]

I believe the hate comes from all the free passes Nintendo gets from reviewers. Like botw the game that didn’t revolutionize anything was called revolutionary by reviewers. It had empty worlds with repetitive tasks yet nothing of that gets mentioned by reviewers. This is by this site being called maybe one of the best games ever and it’s clearly not for most people but they get +3 for being Nintendo. Just my thoughts on the hate and not that I think it’s justified or not.

[King_Noctis]

Free passes? I thought by now this kind of thinking would have gone stale and went away. Games like Pokemon are also a Nintendo game, and can you check what the latest one scored?

I won’t speak for BOTW, but ToTK is literally a sandbox game where you could build or do almost anything and could almost tackle every mission anyway you want to. People hate Ubisoft style games, but whenever we have games like this or Elden Ring some people would still sh*t on them.

At this point I don’t know what kind of game they want to play.

[Ashunderfire86]

Yes that was true a lot of big company reviewers, and even big YouTubers gives always gives Zelda a pass, especially when Breath of The Wild back in 2017 released with framerate issues at launch 🚀 and it still got 10s and 9s, with no one highlighting the issue! But other games get that negative score for that! People are afraid give that game a negative in the presence of the Nintendo creator.

Sadly it might be the same for this game, which is not all that different from Breath of The Wild! If the critics have the guts, they would look 👀 at Hogwart Legacy, Spiderman 2, Final Fantasy 16, Starfield, Alan Wake 2, and even Diablo 4! Come on guys! Zelda got serious competition this year.

[repsahj]

What do you expect? In this kind of news, PS & Xbox fans unite in this opportunity to gank nintendo. XD

(sorry for the double post, I should put my comment here instead of the post above.) XD

[kindi_boy]

The only reason is because it's not a Sony game.

[masterfox]

lol critics , the same critics that gave 8 or 9s to Redfall?, StarWars Survivor? or how about Cyberpunk 2077?, yeah you keep believing this bullcr@#p from them. :D

[staticall]

Hmm, weird. Lowest score on Opencritic right now is from Eurogamer with a "terrible" 4/5. But that 6/10 review from GFINITY (you can find it on n4g in hottest section right now) is not published there.

Keep in mind, Gfinity do publish their review to Opencritic (latest one was from march of this year). And even Josh Brown (the author of that review) also have his other review published (for Wild Hearts).

That surely must be just a coinkydink, right?

[darkrider]

On the switch

[TheEnigma313]

doubt it.

[TheEnigma313]

Only because it's nintendo. They make good games, but to get perfect scores, nah.

[mastershredder]

Best game in what age demo? on one platform…

Magical Zelda fandom ugh….

[Yung-T]

A lot of the traditional Zelda fans like me honestly don't like the BoTW formula as much and miss the traditional dungeons, more streamlined plot and soundtrack.

The people I see hyping this game and BoTW up so much are younger or die-hard Nintendo fans who aren't necessarily attached to the franchise.

[kindi_boy]

please try to remember you only represent yourself not the whole gaming community.

[luckytrouble]

Anyone could have guessed review scores for this game were going to be inflated. Breath of the Wild had a lot of issues. It wasn't a bad game, but it definitely wasn't a 9 - 10/10 either. Odds were rather low Tears of the Kingdom was going to magically fix everything and be the first perfect open world game ever. Nintendo first party games have notoriously worthless reviews though since too many folks are a mix of too much nostalgia for Nintendo and simultaneously too scared of getting on their bad side.

Will this game be fun? I'm sure. Am I going to likely get annoyed again in gaming circles as once again it is one game people magically don't see any of the flaws for? Absolutely.

[Elda]

Video games are subjective.

[Deathdeliverer]

Not going to lie, I did a media blackout for this game. A little thrown off that it is essentially an expansion pack. I’m so used to the games being entirely different in the Zelda series. This should be called Breath of the wild: Future. Maybe Breath of the wild 2. Excellent game and all but strong with the been there doing that feel. Personally I’m thinking 8 or 8.5. Maybe that’ll change.

[anast]

This sucks. So, it means the game is slightly above average.

[Profchaos]

I've only owned a switch for under 6 months I'm playing botw and I'm about 10 hours in good game but seeing all the possibilities in totk makes me want to skip botw

[LoveSpuds]

Dude, resist the temptation. Honestly, BotW deserves your attention, ignore the naysayers on N4G, they are a very insignificant majority when you consider how many millions of people did play the game and loved it.

I would say to stick with your playthrough because it would be hard to go back to after playing this sequel. Just my take squire, I am so glad I replayed BotW before jumping into the sequel.

[LucidIllusion]

Overrated series. 7 at best

[DarthZoolu]

LMFAO!!!!!

[Ashunderfire86]

Not the best game yet, we still got Spiderman 2 and Alan Wake 2! One of those games will beat Zelda for Game of The Year! Tears of The Kingdom is pretty much the same game as Breath of The Wild, but with a few differences for game mechanics. Spiderman 2 is definitely going to be a heavy hitter, that won’t go down easy for Zelda, and it will be the same thing for Alan Wake! Just imagine if Silent Hill 2 remake comes out this year as well!

[OG_TK_Cole]

Tears Of The Kingdom is definitely going to be Game Of The Year, unless Spiderman 2 is beyond amazing. I dont expect Starfield to be amazing at this point.

[kindi_boy]

ToTK is game of the year it doesn't matter what Sony does this year they won't get it.

[Metal4ever]

nah sony has got game of the year over tears of the boring. spiderman 2, final fantasy XVI, resident evil 4 all of these have higher chance at game of the year than the $70 dlc it does matter what sony does they will get it.

[Ashunderfire86]

Going to save this link for VGA awards 2023, and Nintendo fans will eat their words. Zelda got big competition this year, so let’s be honest here guys! Spiderman 2 is going to be so darn good. Especially with Venom, the Green Goblin, among other awesome villains in that game like Kraven. Alan Wake 2 is also coming out this year, and you know what! We forgot Final Fantasy 16 next month! Face it Sony is going to dominate this year with shockers! And I have good feeling we gonna have another unannounced PS5 game release in the fall as well. Zelda Tears of The Kingdom doesn’t have that wow factor like Breath of The Wild did back in 2017, that surprised everyone, because the game is literally more of the same, and Nintendo Switch is more of the same. Hogwarts Legacy got a Billion, and that could be game of the year!

[LoveSpuds]

I have to say, at this point I cannot imagine any game beating Tears in respect of creativity and scope. The new powers feel incredible and at around 7 hours in, the possibilities feel endless.

Of course, I hope Spiderman 2 and Starfield are in the GOTY conversation because that means we will have had a bunch of incredible games in 2023.

[Binarycode]

hahahhahahahhaah

Of all time. The most stupidest saying ever.

I'll correct.

One of the best games on a Nintendo Console.

Playstation has it's best games etc.

Xbox has some games.