Parents' Guide to

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Game Nintendo Switch 2023
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom box shot featuring the elf-like protagonist Link looking over a cliff.

Common Sense Media Review

Chad Sapieha By Chad Sapieha , based on child development research. How do we rate?

age 10+

Brilliant adventure encourages creativity and imagination.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 10+?

Any Positive Content?

Parent and Kid Reviews

age 9+

Based on 26 parent reviews

age 6+

PERFECTION

This Zelda game is a masterpiece, They added even more creativity than BOTW It's amazing! and haters keep hating. You're just mad you cant build easily.
age 10+

An enormous game with enormously realized potential!

This is a fantastic game with loads to do. For those coming from Breath of the Wild, players might note that many resources that were abundant in the previous game are more limited in this one. This is by design. While there are many, many ways to "cheese" challenges, the resources to do so are limited, thereby encouraging players to think of creative solutions with the limited tools they have. And you frequently can run out of resources that you want to use through overuse. You can attach most things from your inventory to weapons, shields and arrows, increasing their durability and/or changing their effects. Money is scarce, and I have not seen ice arrows, fire arrows, etc. sold anywhere over the 12 or so hours I've spent in the game. If you want to thrive in the game, you will need to manage your inventory well and keep certain things you need on hand in order to make elemental arrows and other things you might need on the fly. While the overall land is the same as the one found in Breath of the Wild, there are many platforms in the sky and a dark underbelly to explore. Reaching a far-off high platform can be challenging, and often requires building things using the new Ultrahand ability in order to reach them. Since so much of the game is in the sky, stamina is very important, as it will allow you to glide farther and climb higher. Hearts become more important as you explore the underground. The underground is a tainted landscape filled with "Blight". If you touch that stuff, then your maximum health decreases until you reach a large light source or return to the surface. In addition, the place is enormously dark. There are abundant plants called "Brightblooms" that you can collect and can light up your way, but it can be terrifying to walk in the dark to get surprised by an enemy. The enemies do glow somewhat, but with much of the underground being dark until you light it up, it likely will be an area most players wait to explore heavily until the late game. If you have the courage to brave the underground, you'll be rewarded with items and things that can be enormously useful, especially Zonaite, a resource that can be inserted into "gacha" machines to get gadgets for your builds. The more you insert at a time, the more you get at once. These machines are spread across the land, and each machine has a different pool of items that are usually well-suited to the region or area. By stockpiling lots of these items, you can make builds to fulfill challenges and reach places in creative ways. Make sure to keep enough on hand so when you encounter a new machine, you can use it and get new items for your builds. The shrines, however, have the restriction that you cannot use these items in your inventory. This makes sense, since the shrines are designed to help you develop skills and enrich your creativity in specific ways. From what I've heard, there are even more in this game than in Breath of the Wild! The game is certainly not lacking in content. Teachers also can use this game as a teaching tool. Since the game encourages building and creativity, it can engage the brain in powerful ways. Physics especially comes to mind as a subject with strong correlation, since much of the game revolves around making builds in order to help people, reach new places and accomplish tasks.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (26 ):
Kids say (55 ):

Nintendo doesn't often give players direct sequels to Zelda games, but when it does, you can expect something special. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom builds on everything players loved about Breath of the Wild by tweaking and augmenting play mechanics in meaningful ways. For example, the physics in the original game were brilliant, allowing players to use their intuition to do things like roll rocks down hills, use the buoyancy of water to make less dense objects spring up from the surface, and cause fire to spread through grassy fields and forests. All of that still applies, but with the new building and fuse systems, players can now apply these same concepts to the weapons, vehicles, and objects they create. What happens if you add wheels to a plank? A fan to the back of a raft? A rocket to a set of wings? A sword to a shield? The possibilities are almost endless, and a huge part of the fun is experimenting to see how you can use this freedom to overcome obstacles. There's rarely a single right solution to any problem.

The world of Hyrule, meanwhile, is now somehow even bigger and more fascinating to explore. The addition of floating islands and subterranean caves creates a three-tiered map with an astounding amount of verticality, challenging players to think about how best to navigate this capacious landscape. It's a land teeming with secrets, from strange rock formations and geoglyphs (enormous drawings carved into the earth) to cave systems players can explore Minecraft-style by hammering through walls of rock to find precious ores. It feels like nearly every inch of this beautiful, fantastical land has something waiting for curious players to discover. The compelling characters and memorable stories scattered throughout this picturesque kingdom are just the sugar on top. Such a thoughtfully designed world and the boundless creativity it offers players make The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a worthy successor to one of the best games ever made.

Game Details

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