Why it Took Me Three Years to Beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

A personal journey through Hyrule, completionism and the game that arrived at exactly the right time.

Monday 3rd August 2026.

The day I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for the very first time.

To some people, that probably doesn't mean much. After all, the game has been out for over three years, so the obvious question is: what took me so long?

The answer isn't simple. This is a story of perseverance, setbacks, and picking myself back up without ever giving up. Completing Tears of the Kingdom means more to me than any other game or piece of media I have ever finished, and that's what this piece is all about.

I am not here to tell you why Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece. I'm not here to rank anything, review its mechanics or gush about how good or bad the story is. There is an abundance of retrospectives, essays and all that available for those who want to delve deeper. This isn't going to analyse TOTK purely as a video game, but rather as an experience — my experience.

This is the story of a personal journey that began officially in 2019 and finally came to an end this month, nearly seven years later. It's a story of what Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom came to mean to me. They stopped being Nintendo games a long time ago. To me, they became pieces of art that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life.

This is my story of beating The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

But to explain this properly, we have to use ‘Recall’ and go all the way back — not just to 2019, but to when and where I became a Zelda fan.

Chapter One: Finding Zelda

As a kid growing up playing video games and having Nintendo as my only output, I was never the Zelda kid. Instead, I was all things Super Mario, and most kids around me were. I grew up with the moustachioed man throughout my early childhood. He became the face of my Nintendo DS, Wii, 3DS and, to an extent, my Wii U.

I knew what Zelda was, but it was never my series. My first interaction came in the form of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where I loved the look and animations of Toon Link and his Wind Waker stage. I got a lot of use out of him, despite me being awful at the game — something I still am nowadays. Ironically, the first Zelda game I owned was indeed The Wind Waker. The HD version for Wii U came with my console for Christmas 2013.

It was my first foray into the world of Zelda, and experiencing its characters, story and gameplay was a whole curveball compared to the game formulas I had been used to. It was probably what ended up halting my progress in the game. I remember getting to the Fire and Ice Islands, and nothing more past that. Shame really, but I was still the Mario guy at heart, and I had plenty of content to keep me entertained, meaning Zelda never made a lasting impact.

But just because I didn't enjoy it as much as Mario didn't mean I didn't like it. I loved my time playing Wind Waker, and I was still very much a massive Nintendo fan. I watched every Direct at the time, bought the monthly magazines whenever I had enough money and would keep up to date on the latest news and games.

Even if I wasn't playing Zelda games, the series was always somewhere in the background. Unfortunately, in 2015, I sold my Wii U to help fund a gaming PC and, at the time, I didn't look back. For the next few years, my attention shifted almost entirely towards PC gaming, and the Big N had to take a backseat. I wasn't the only one making this shift. 2015 was one of Nintendo's worst years as the Wii U continued to fail, and it wasn't until late 2016, when the Nintendo Switch was unveiled, that things started to look up.

During this time, I never stopped following them. I still remember waking up extra early for the Switch Presentation in January 2017 and watching it right before school. Sitting in my bedroom watching this brand-new console was so exciting, and the games backed that up too. Unsurprisingly, Super Mario Odyssey hogged my attention, but other games that I have now played, like Splatoon 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, looked fantastic. Then came the showpiece finale: the final trailer for the latest Zelda game and the Switch's launch title, Breath of the Wild.

I was amazed.

I had never seen anything like it before. At this point in my life, I was almost entirely focused on multiplayer PC games like CS:GO, Minecraft and Rocket League — games you could jump into for 20 minutes or spend hours playing with friends. Breath of the Wild looked like something completely different, unlike anything I'd ever seen before, and judging by its reaction online, I wasn't alone in thinking that.

It made me want a Nintendo Switch. So why did it take me nearly three years to get one? Simple. Alongside these aforementioned multiplayer games, I was involved and dedicated to FIFA and Formula 1 games and their communities, particularly F1, where I league raced, commentated and spent a large majority of my time. When I did play something else, it tended to be other games that didn't demand huge commitments, games I could pick up for 20 minutes or so.

That was why a massive open-world adventure wasn't particularly compatible with me at the time. I still watched bits of gameplay and trailers, which gave me my fill without spoiling the game for my eventual playthrough. However, I did spoil myself massively with Super Mario Odyssey. Before playing it myself, I watched Dashie play through it in its entirety, meaning that before I had even picked up a controller, I knew everything that was going to happen. That remains, to this day, the ONLY Nintendo game I have had spoiled, and that was through my own doing.

I still think Odyssey is a masterpiece and one of the Switch's best games, but it never managed to connect with me in the same way as games like Super Mario Galaxy or Super Mario 64. When I finally did play it after getting my Switch for Christmas in 2019, it was a breath of fresh air.

I got my Switch with Luigi's Mansion 3 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Odyssey was bought with my own money. I also ended up picking up Spyro Reignited Trilogy after a friend recommended it to me. He actually worked for the shop where I bought the Switch and managed to get me a discount, which was a nice bonus.

I prioritised my experiences with Odyssey and Luigi's Mansion 3, naturally due to my preference for the bing bing wahoo man, while Mario Kart became my game to dip in and out of. I had already poured hundreds of hours into the Wii U version, so it felt great returning to it after several years away. It also helps that I'm very good at it, and that the game itself is amazing.

But that made connecting with my final game on the shelf all the more worthwhile. It wasn't familiar to me, nor did I expect anything from it. I hadn't watched much gameplay since 2017, which meant I had virtually no idea what I was in for.

That game was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Chapter Two: Hyrule's Magnum Opus

I still remember, six years later, what it was like to start and play Breath of the Wild for the first time. For the first three or four hours, I barely did anything at all. It took me around three days just to leave the Great Plateau, not through being stuck or unable to, I simply didn't want to leave. I spent hours experimenting with weapons and materials, fighting (and sometimes avoiding) monsters, climbing every hill and tower I could, sometimes just wandering aimlessly with no set objective or destination. Sometimes I'd stop just to watch birds chirp or fly or pay attention to the local wildlife roaming the grassy fields. I remember being extremely fascinated by something as simple as nature existing inside a video game.

That's one thing I think BOTW does better than almost any other game I have played. Most games consistently push you towards the next objective, the next destination. There's always another fight, cutscene, ability or mission waiting around the corner. Games encourage you to keep moving in order to keep progressing, going from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. Breath of the Wild doesn't do any of that.

The game could not care less what you spend your time doing in Hyrule. In fact, it encouraged me to stop more than it encouraged me to keep going. Not stop playing, but to stop and appreciate the world, look around and take it all in. The game is proud — and rightly so — of the world it revolves around, and I think it does a brilliant job of making us appreciate it. So many times during my playthrough I would go, "Woah, look at that!", and I am sure that was intentional from the Zelda team.

Looking back, I almost think this sense of discovery can easily be lost in our own lives and is something we as humans don't treasure enough. We are often guilty of spending so much time rushing from one thing to the next that we forget to appreciate the quieter moments. Even now, one of my favourite things to do is simply go for a walk and enjoy nature and the feeling of being outside. When I think about that feeling, it reminds me of how I explored Hyrule for the first time.

One thing you should know about me is that I hate doing things the easy way, the boring way. This goes for a lot of things in life. As a wise blue hedgehog once said: "An adventure's no fun if it's too easy!", and that's exactly the approach I took into my own BOTW experience. The game points you down the path towards Kakariko Village and Zora's Domain before exploring all the other regions' dilemmas, but I never really followed that path. Instead, I wandered off in whichever direction interested me at the time. I explored because I wanted to, not because the game told me to.

That is the beauty of Breath of the Wild. It never holds your hand. It simply gives you the world and says: "Go." Experience it however you choose. And I did exactly that. For three months, this game was my oyster, my life, my reason to wake up in the morning. Hyrule completely consumed my attention. The game came at a great time in an otherwise poor period of my life.

I had recently dropped out of college and wasn't really doing anything productive with my life. It didn't help that I was struggling mentally and rarely wanted to leave the house. Then COVID happened, and suddenly everyone else's world became much smaller too. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if BOTW made the situation worse. Not because the game itself was a bad influence, but because I loved being in Hyrule so much that I preferred it to reality. Also, a deadly disease wasn't present in Hyrule either.

Hyrule became my escape in a world of restrictions. As someone who is autistic, clear and structured guidelines and narratives are things I have become accustomed to in video games: getting from Point A to Point B and knowing where I am supposed to be going. Especially at the time I played it, BOTW offered the complete opposite of what was an awful period for everyone. This game shouldn't have worked for me. It allows almost too much freedom, to a point where it can become overwhelming, and I'll admit there were times in my first playthrough when I did feel overwhelmed.

But it worked.

It clicked.

It was the juxtaposition in my life I needed. I was immersed in that world in ways I couldn't be in my own. What I couldn't understand about myself at the time was understood in Hyrule. The characters, enemies, villages, even the NPCs — I connected with all of them in some form. I had never felt this attached to a game's world like I did with Breath of the Wild, and that experience is rare in video games.

It got to a point where BOTW was my life, the reason I woke up in the morning, the thing I went to bed thinking about. It was an obsession for me for a good two months, and I am not ashamed to admit that. It gave me purpose at a time when I felt little purpose in my own life. Saving Hyrule, at the very least, was a goal to work towards, and the game was motivating me to achieve this goal in whatever way I wanted to. It got to the point where I was playing the game 15 hours a day and sleeping the rest. It became unhealthy, but who cared? The whole world was unhealthy at that time, and those Korok Seeds weren't going to find themselves.

Above all, the game made me want to do EVERYTHING. I wanted to experience all this Hyrule had to offer. Every side quest, every shrine, every collectable, every armour piece, every Compendium entry — I wanted it all. BOTW made me realise that, in life, I am a completionist. Not in terms of wanting to do everything I possibly can in my life, but with the things I have, I want to get the most out of them. Even simple things like food and drink. Going to a restaurant, I will ALWAYS finish a meal because I believe in making the most of everything, and leaving food that you paid good money for is something I don't like. I get the most out of events I go to, like football matches. As an Everton fan, many a time I have thought of leaving early, but I never do.

This attitude and way of living stays with me through a lot of things and has been exemplified especially through BOTW and TOTK. I have always been a completionist at heart when it comes to video games. I remember 100%-ing Super Mario Galaxy multiple times as a kid, getting that coveted 121st star after beating the game with Luigi. It helped at the time that my game collection, like most kids', was limited, so Galaxy became comfort food that I could play whenever. Now I live in a time where I can buy my own games, and more and more games take my interest. But I still choose to 100% these games to get the most out of them. Especially when these games aren't getting any cheaper!

Games like Ring Fit Adventure, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and, more recently, Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza have all followed that trend for me. I don't need a major reward for 100%-ing a video game, as that achievement in itself is rewarding enough for me. Knowing there is nothing else left to do, explore or learn about the game is a satisfying feeling for me, and I'm sure that feeling is shared by many other completionists.

In BOTW's case, I made sure that I did everything before taking on Calamity Ganon for the first time. All Shrines, all Korok Seeds, all upgraded armour pieces, every side quest, every memory, every recipe, buying the house in Hateno Village — I did it all. That includes the two DLC expansions that released. I was roaming around with the Master Cycle Zero before Zelda could even have a go herself. I remember how badass I felt pulling up to the Sanctum in Hyrule Castle driving that.

The battle was over in an instant. I was too powerful, unsurprisingly, and with over 400 hours in the game, Calamity and Dark Beast Ganon didn't stand a chance. Not to mention the fact that I started this game with my only experience of Zelda being arguably the easiest of the bunch in Wind Waker, and by the end of my time with it, I was taking Lynels down for breakfast blindfolded.

I rolled credits on the 4th of April 2020, and that day was when I discovered my love for The Legend of Zelda. For the first time in my life, I understood why so many people held this series in such high regard. BOTW became my second-favourite game of all time, only behind Super Mario Galaxy, which has childhood-nostalgia-bias plot armour that prevents it from ever being dethroned.

Above anything, though, the game made me fall in love with the character of Zelda herself. Not for what you think, I promise! It's because of her character development. I love when a character who isn't playable develops over the course of a story because of the player's actions, and Zelda is exactly that. She spends a lot of the memories in self-doubt, carrying the weight of enormous expectations while desperately trying to unlock the power that never seemed to come.

I was also at a time in my life when my own purpose was in doubt. I didn't know what was best for me and didn't have the answers I needed. But Zelda managed to find hers, not without tragedy and hurt, but watching her gradually overcome these doubts and become the person you see at the end of the game was incredibly rewarding. She didn't stop failing. She simply kept going.

I think that's one of the reasons Breath of the Wild resonated with me so deeply: it arrived at exactly the right time. It gave me a world I could escape into when I needed one most.

Finishing the game also happened to come at a time when the future of the series was already decided. The train ride had just set off, and I had got on at the perfect time.

The destination, however, was still a ways away...

Chapter Three: The Wait

2020 was a terrible year for most people, but for someone like me who hadn’t exactly been living ‘by the book’ beforehand, lockdown and staying indoors wasn’t entirely untoward. It gave me a lot of free time to explore, find new passions and take on projects that otherwise might not have been possible. Being indoors had its benefits too. Games like Ring Fit Adventure became an important part of making me feel better, and I played so many games during lockdown that I would struggle to fit into my day-to-day life now.

2020 was not short of new Nintendo releases either. Of course, the big one was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which became a major part of my initial lockdown. I lived and breathed that game even more than BOTW for a good two months, but I was also looking ahead to what was to come. 2019 had been a great year for Nintendo, not just because of major releases like Luigi’s Mansion 3, Fire Emblem: Three Houses and the first mainline Pokémon game on a home console in Sword and Shield, but also because it had announced plenty of exciting projects for the future.

One of which was the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Announced as the closing reveal of Nintendo’s E3 Direct in 2019, the game was given a short teaser trailer that only really confirmed two things: it took place after the events of BOTW, and Zelda had cut her hair. I remember 2020 being full of speculation. After all, we had so much free time on our hands to do exactly that. What would this game look like? Would Zelda be playable? Was Ganondorf back? How would Link go back to his default hearts at the beginning of the game? So many questions to ask...

It was going to be a while before we got any more information, so what did I do to pass the time?

I played EVERY single 3D Zelda game from start to finish. Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker — for real this time — Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, all played and beaten over the course of two months. The experience was captivating, legendary even. After getting my first real taste of the world of Zelda through BOTW, I finally experienced the best these games had to offer and could now proudly call myself a Zelda fan. I won’t drag on about how much I love all of these games here, but each one left a mark on me and made the feelings I had already developed through BOTW even stronger.

But alas, it was time to look ahead.

Over the next few years, we were finally treated to more trailers, a name reveal and eventually a release date for what would become The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This was the first game in the franchise where I had been there for the entire anticipation journey. I watched analysis videos, discussions, hopes and dreams, prediction videos — everything. Eventually, the game was scheduled to release in 2023, three years after I had explored that version of Hyrule to its absolute extremities.

It is still the most excited I have ever been for a media release in my life. More than the Sonic movies. More than the Switch 2. Heck, even more than my graduation. If someone offered me the choice between experiencing my graduation day again or playing TOTK for the first time again, my graduation doesn’t stand a chance!

Speaking of graduation, yes, I was at university by this point. I was finally back in academia and doing something I was passionate about and genuinely enjoyed. If the BOTW period of my life represented a lack of purpose and the search for something to pursue, the TOTK period represented the opposite. I had found that purpose and was now pursuing it to the fullest. I had left that older version of myself behind in terms of the struggle and uncertainty, but not the memories. I was still carrying them with me into this new stage of my life.

University was not easy, and at the time of writing this, having just finished my master’s degree, I can confidently say that never really changed. There is something almost poetic about TOTK’s completion representing the end of my time in academia, whereas BOTW represented the beginning of the journey that eventually led me there.

But more on that later.

I remember very well the morning after the February 2023 Nintendo Direct, the one that showed off the Collector’s Edition for Tears of the Kingdom, and the struggle of trying to pre-order it while juggling a university lecture. I had never bought a Collector’s Edition for a game before, and I had barely pre-ordered games at all, aside from a few like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. I had already been saving money for TOTK, but despite my best efforts, I was unsuccessful in my mission.

Eventually, Nintendo UK restocked the Collector’s Edition and saved me from disappointment, meaning I was ready and raring to go for the 12th of May.

Ironically, the release came just one day after my own birthday on the 11th. It felt strangely fitting. I had never had a major release land so close to my birthday before, and for Zelda in particular, TOTK arriving in May made the whole occasion feel even more unique.

To me, it felt like the best birthday present I could have asked for.

I barely remember what presents I actually got for my 21st birthday.

I do remember getting my next adventure with Link and Zelda.

Of course, I didn’t just stop at the Collector’s Edition. Over the next few months, I wanted as many amiibo as I could get my hands on, whether they were TOTK, BOTW or Zelda-related in general. I especially worked hard to find the Majora’s Mask Link amiibo so I could unlock the corresponding paraglider fabric, and together they have formed a rather esteemed collection on my shelf.

It was a struggle to collect everything at first, but that paled in comparison to the much bigger struggle looming ahead.

The hardest part of TOTK had seemingly come and gone: waiting to play the damn game.

Unfortunately, that was only the start.

Much harder was the stage of life I now found myself in. I was no longer someone with very few responsibilities who could dedicate almost every waking hour to the Kingdom of Hyrule. I was at university. I was working part-time as a barman. Life was completely different from when I first played BOTW, and I knew that completing Tears of the Kingdom in the same way was going to be a much bigger challenge.

I was right.

Here I am in August 2026, writing about how I finally beat the game three years later.

And here’s how...

Chapter Four – Hyrule My Way

I was working on the 12th of May which meant I couldn't begin my journey with Tears of the Kingdom immediately. I remember rushing back home after work around midnight, dropping everything just to experience the opening of the game, even just for a few hours. I eventually called it a night at 4am, but I was hungry to play more.

Watching the opening for the very first time was a surreal experience, something you very rarely get when playing a video game. It evoked those same senses I got from playing BOTW, but this time in a different way. The wonder was still there but was further exemplified because of my experience with BOTW as well as the wonders of exploring a vastly expanded world of Hyrule. It was also just great to get a continuation of a story. So many times with Zelda, each experience is vastly different to the next, and even sequels like Phantom Hourglass and especially Majora's Mask never feel like direct continuations as much as TOTK does.

Some would say it is to the game's detriment that it is a sequel. Using the same overworld, enemies being largely the same, very few fresh places to explore, but when the overworld was to me, as perfect as it could be in BOTW, it can get away with re-using the world, and especially with the promise of even more to explore, both up high and down below, it was a positive more than a negative to the game.

I was hooked right from the off, from the very first cutscene of Link and Zelda venturing down the depths of Hyrule Castle, as the game presents a prologue to the events about to unfold. Seeing the remains of the decayed Ganondorf, his destroyal of the Master Sword and Link's right arm, as well as Link failing to catch a falling Zelda, who vanishes from existence due to the Stone Relic she picked up. It is a fast starting game, the polar opposite to the experience of BOTW, raising the stakes (and the castle) had to be done to set the scene for what was to come, and as I said, I was sold from that moment forth.

A central theme of the game is to do with hands, and connections especially, and the game preludes that with the central theme of Link's arm being badly damaged and of course, the shot of his hand missing the Princess's is embedded into the core theme of the game, and the whole driving force for finding Zelda, because you 'lost' her by not catching her. Not since Majora's Mask has a 3D Zelda game seemed so epic upon starting. Too often a time, Link loves a sleep and a lie-in (don't we all), with stakes being relatively low at first to settle the player in. The beauty of a sequel is that the ground rules can be bent slightly, those who have already played BOTW won't want a direct repeat, so to expect a grandiose opening was correct and boy it delivered.

Well, that is until you awake in the Great Sky Island that is...

The initial tutorial despite being a rehash of BOTW's is still Zelda at its absolute best. First off, the jump down, the title reveal, the music, is unbelievable. I don't like to think that BOTW and TOTK are trying to compete against each other as they work better when trying to complement one another, but TOTK craps on BOTW's front garden with its opening I'm sorry. The scales have already been raised, and Link's first sky-dive out of the Room of Awakening makes you know just that, as he dives head-first into a brand-new adventure, new gadget arm and Decayed Master Sword intact!

The atmosphere and ambiguity of the Great Sky Island is amazing. Not since Skyward Sword has Zelda reached high above the clouds and even then Skyloft was hustling and bustling with an alive atmosphere that is present for the entire playthrough. Here, where Link stands, unsure of where he needs to go, the atmosphere is almost unnervy, mysterious. How did he wake up all the way here? Where BOTW and the Great Plateau acted as a tutorial for the player and for Link to get accustomed to, you know, being alive and awake for the first time in 100 years, there is a lack of guidance for Link and for me that's what makes the Great Sky Island so great. It's ominous, even when you meet Rauru's spirit for the first time, he doesn't tell you the answers right away.

One thing I also love and have always loved about the Sky Islands is the music and scenery. No wonder Nintendo used a lot of the Sky Island environments for marketing material, because it is gorgeous. The music as well, fits the gravitas so well. It's calm and relaxing but eery and mysterious, sad even. I know a lot of people have complaints about the Sky Islands and the lack of things to do and whilst I echo a lot of those thoughts, the lack of presence up these areas might have been purposeful, and I think the environment fits. Especially for the Great Sky Island, no one is up there with you. At least with BOTW, the 'Old Man' was there, and you felt a sense of a world with people in as you could see the rest of Hyrule that lies ahead. In TOTK, there's nothing. Just you and the clouds.

I like and I dislike the more linear structure of the Great Sky Island. After visiting the Temple of Time for the first time and failing to 'register' with your brand-new cool gadget gear for a hand, you are directed to the three shrines at different points of the map. Of course the same is true in BOTW's case, but I felt more open and less restrictive. In TOTK, it's like a domino effect created by the game's new abilities. Ultrahand is required to create boats and bridges to traverse the multiple islands, or if you were like me, chop down plenty of wooden logs and make an ultra-long shaft! You unlock fuse which allows you to attach weapons and objects together to help you in combat, as you encounter more enemies the further you progress, as well as fusing items like bright bloom seeds to your arrows to light up dim caves. Ascend is helpful and required to get to a few areas with Link's limited stamina, and traversing the cold area is made much easier with it.

I do love the necessary (but not required) glide back down to the Temple via the wing. One thing the tutorial does very well is integrate the Zonai devices very well. Of course, many more hi-complexity devices are uncovered throughout your journey, but the Great Sky Island gives Link a great playground to play with his new toys. Fuse what he wants, craft what he wants without failure. That makes up massively for the linearity of the shrine path the game aids you to follow.

It mirrors a traditional Zelda dungeon, or for that matter, the philosophy that has identified Zelda games for generations. Zelda has always been about getting from one place to the next, using weapons, abilities and items to aid you, in a linear fashion. So are the dungeons. Think of your favourite dungeons and why you love them so much. They work because they involve solving things in a structure that allows progression, rewarding the player, and the Great Sky Island works in that same vein. As open as it wants to be, there are some places unreachable without certain abilities, just like games of the past. It allows for that sense of 'aha!' whilst playing, which was brilliant.

On the topic of 'Ahas!', nothing exemplifies this feeling like a Korok seed, and BOY are they back. 1000 of them in fact, and there are a few on the Great Sky Island. I hate these guys but also love them. They were one of my favourite parts of the Wind Waker, especially Makar, but in BOTW they are a chore to collect. I was glad to see them back for continuation’s sake, but I knew completing this game would mean I would need to re-accustom myself with that familiar noise every time completing a puzzle.

The main selling point of BOTW was its freedom, sandbox nature, and the lack of linearity that was a conundrum at the time of the game's development. Where they ended up going too far down the linear path with Skyward Sword, the overwhelming notion was that that structure was not the way to go, and to juxtapose that, the Zelda team made BOTW. The Great Plateau is a small sample of the main meal. The Great Sky Island feels more like a dungeon than a sandbox area, and that's ok, because it isn't trying to be the Great Plateau, again.

Think of it as the Great Plateau as a game like Super Mario 64, and the Great Sky Island as a Super Mario Galaxy style of play. Both are 3D environment Mario games where Mario's moves help him from one place to the next, but in a game like 64, you are free to explore the worlds in whatever order you like, grab what stars you want. Whereas Galaxy requires you to stay on the beaten path for its duration. The Great Sky Island envelops this feeling, but also reassures the player that freedom is still a part of this game's core.

For a story purposes, I prefer the Great Plateau slightly more. It represented a place that enemies like Guardians could never enter, safeguarded by its high walls that meant Link was safe at the Shrine of Resurrection. Having the (now decayed) Temple of Time and seeing the ruins of the Kingdom served as a deep reminder of the crux of the situation. The Great Sky Island seems like an extraordinary, out of this world island that despite being anything familiar we have seen before, feels strange and ominous. The player knows of the Upheaval and the events that took place due to Ganondorf's reawakening, but Link doesn't. Only till he gets to Lookout Landing can he sense what has happened. Rauru and King Rhoam both play very similar roles too, and I can't help but feel Rauru was underselling himself for a reason. He's just about interesting to want to know more, whereas King Rhoam serves his purpose and that is that.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, back at the Temple of Time. I remember spending ALL day immersed on the Great Sky Island, almost like I didn't want to leave. It's always funny looking back at the opening of games now with answers, especially with Zelda's whereabouts. Not only was the scene Link receiving the Recall ability Zelda's Sage offering, of course the Light Dragon is seen as soon as Link skydives for the first time. It would be interesting to revisit this game again one day and see all of these little tidbits these sneaky developers were hiding, now that we know the full picture.

Seeing Zelda pick up the Decayed Master Sword where it looked like she was on the Great Plateau raised so many answers. Where was she? What's up with her dress? How did Fi know to recall itself back in time? Speaking of Fi, her implementation into both Wild era games has been fantastic. Ever since her appearance in Skyward Sword, giving the Master Sword origin, and a voice, she was integrated perfectly into both BOTW and TOTK. Having her 'speak', especially in the BOTW memory where Zelda saves Link from the guardian onslaught was amazing, and that is carried into TOTK. Whenever the Master Sword makes her sound it gets to me emotionally, especially after my Skyward Sword playthrough, and I'm glad that small connection survived post-Skyward Sword and into the Wild era games. With the Ocarina of Time remake inbound, it will be interesting to see is Fi will be in that game too, considering OOT comes after Skyward Sword in the timeline.

But alas, down into Hyrule I went towards Lookout Landing. Here is where my playthrough really starts to change, however. I already knew I wanted to 100% this game no matter what. I did it with BOTW so it's only fair to do it to the sequel right? I followed my tactic of using very little if any guides at all, which turned out to be the cause of this game taking 3 years of my life to complete. Not only that, but I also wanted to explore every nook and cranny this game had to offer. With 3x the number of surfaces to explore, as well as caves on the overworld, I didn't want to leave any crumbs on my plate, so I explored EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING.

There would be numerous days where I would roam around for hours, picking up Korok seeds here or there or maybe beating a boss or two. Or maybe, I didn't do anything at all. There were some days I just treaded ground for an hour or two before bed, getting almost nothing done. It became routine for me, and it worked. The sense of knowing there was always something more to be explored the next day, or the next time I played the game was enough to draw me back. It meant that one of the first things I ended up doing was uncovering the Hero's Path.

The Hero's Path was a lifesaver for me in my completionist method of playing. Returning from BOTW, it tracks the player's movements, so you know where you have or haven't gone to on your playthrough, and even better for TOTK, it uncovers all three layers of the world too. Unlocking it was the ONLY thing in my entire playthrough that I streamlined...up until the very end of my playthrough when I just wanted to roll credits. It became my guide to what ground I have covered and what ground needs covering.

My playthrough was divided by the game's regions. Unlocking each tower and the map surrounding it, traversing all of that area's ground in the sky and on the surface, before moving on to the next area. If it sounds confusing, good, it's meant to. I have a thing with structures and that was the way I was going to play the game. It took a lot of time and hours to see everything, but it also made the big impactful moments, particularly related to the story, that much more impactful.

After retrieving the first Geoglyph, my path, like many, ventured me towards Rito Village to tackle the first of the game's 'Regional Phenomena'. This whole questline was one of my favourite parts of the game. I always loved the vibe from the Rito's in BOTW, especially its village and the snow tundra next to it, and it's no different here. Unsurprisingly, following the straight line to the Wind Temple wasn't going to suffice. I did everything around the village and its tundra before heading for the big bad. There was something I enjoyed about the place being in turmoil, full of snow. Having the village full of child Rito's as the adults had to venture off to find food made the Rito so much better.

When I did get onto the beaten path, it was sensational. The quest involves Tulin, son of Teba who helped Link get to Divine Beast Vah Medoh, as he is the only one who can control the winds, and able to use that to his advantage when facing the Stormwind Ark. It has been echoed plenty of times before, but Tulin's ability was so predominant in my playthrough that it became a core part of Link's moveset, like climbing or flurry rushing. It would feel strange going back to BOTW or even a subsequent new playthrough of TOTK and having to paraglide without him by my side. I like Tulin as a character too. At first he is just a young Rito warrior wanting to prove himself, but he matures over the course of the story to say he is a worthy character and ally for Link. Still not as good as Revali though, something about his jerkiness makes him the more likeable for me...for some reason.

When the Legend of Zelda is peak, nothing, and I mean, nothing can top it. The Wind Temple was just that. The ascent to the top and towards the Temple was so exhilarating. It really shows you the expanded scale of the world, whilst simultaneously making you feel so small. The shot when you get to the top, the music fades and it's just you and Tulin high up in the clouds. What a shot. Then comes Colgera.

Despite being a rather easy boss in retrospect, the climax of the fight high above the clouds, with someone fighting by your side for the first time in a 3D Zelda game since Twilight Princess, and the music. THE MUSIC. I had no words experiencing this for the first time. The music in the fight isn't just phenomenal; it is ascension worthy. Hearing an orchestrated, climactic rendition of the Dragon Roost Island theme was tearjerkingly outstanding. I should have seen it coming with it being the Rito, and Colgera being similar to Molgera from the Wind Temple in Wind Waker but alas, it was one of those experiences that leaves you thinking about it for days-on-end.

At that point, Wind Waker was still my favourite traditional Zelda game. I had finally finished it in my 2020 Zelda marathon, years after abandoning it on Wii U as a kid. So hearing Dragon Roost again felt like two different parts of my journey with this franchise colliding. Like Toon Link's presence was there with me to help me through the battle. Living the moment felt like the first time playing a Zelda game that I had been rewarded for becoming a fan because of BOTW. Understanding music and references emotionally is something I connect to deeply, assuming it is only used sporadically and with good intent. A lot of TOTK's soundtrack uses melodies from its predecessor, and despite being good tunes, you don't feel that emotional connection like I did for Colgera's theme. I mean, you know a moment is memorable when you instantly rush to YouTube to look for other people's reactions to the same thing.

The temple itself is still quite basic. The familiar trope of activating terminals should have stayed with the Divine Beasts and not transferred over, as despite the designs and structure being more impressive this time around, like I said before, a dungeon works best when it gives you those 'Aha!' moments that require problem solving multiple things over the duration of the dungeon. Puzzles rarely build upon one another. In many traditional dungeons, solving one puzzle changes your understanding of the place. You acquire an item, alter the environment, discover a new route, revisit an old room from a different perspective, those sorts of things. The dungeons in TOTK lack that and instead has 5 completely independent puzzles that when solved will unlock the boss, but hey, they are still a slight improvement from BOTW's outings.

The irony is that the Great Sky Island actually understands something the temples sometimes forget, a little linearity can create progression. I guess we will see in the next 3D game if the Zelda team can still rustle the same magic that gave us places like Arbiter's Grounds or the Ancient Cistern.

With that, my journey finally felt like I was making headwind and progression started to actually take shape. At this time it was around mid-June, and I had ticked over 100 hours of playtime. My journey naturally took towards the Eldin region with Death Mountain and Goron City. That included a detour to the Forgotten Temple to discover the rest of the Geoglyphs, and discovering the rest of Zelda's fate. There was just ONE BIG PROBLEM. The route from Hebra and Rito Village towards Eldin and Goron City crosses over Korok Forest, the previous home of the Master Sword and the Great Deku Tree. So naturally, I made my way there, cured the Deku Tree and learnt of the Master Sword's direct location. Little did I know the lore implications of the sacred sword.

My biggest regret from my playthrough and being honest, one of the only regrets I even have is retrieving the Master Sword early. I was so accustomed to having it in BOTW that I wanted it straight away in Tears, but obviously a major part of the game is to do with the sword's restoration from the incident at the start of the game. I made my way to the Light Dragon and had enough stamina to retrieve the Legendary Sword herself.

The scene is always glorious in Zelda games, and this was no different. Pulling the sword out of a dragon's head no less. But for me I had not discovered the lengths the sword had gone to be recovered, and even with Zelda's cutscene played I didn't think much of it. It was only when I discovered the next memory, where Mineru talks of the forbidden act of Dragonification, that I finally put two and two together.

I spoiled myself that Zelda was the Light Dragon, and I hated that. Retrieving the Master Sword didn't feel rewarding at the time of retrieval, whereas if you had to discover the truth of Zelda's journey it would have been so much better. It's not an unpopular opinion to say I wish they wouldn't have let you get the Master Sword until after the final Tear, locking you away from going near the Light Dragon. Of course, after the 11th tear, Zelda comes much further down to a more reasonable height in the Sky to help you find her, but there are still plenty of spots in the Sky where at her highest she is findable.

Memories in Breath of the Wild didn't have any repercussions for discovering them out of order. Of course, they are meant to be watched chronologically but nothing changes, or no major revelations are found UNTIL the final memory is unlocked, where it shows Zelda finally finding her sacred power to save Link, and also how Link was put in the Shrine of Resurrection. The rest of the memories only serve to display the story of the past, events that have already happened and events that do not matter to the world you play in in the present. TOTK tried and failed to do this again, because of Zelda's presence in the current world being the Light Dragon. It felt wrong to get the Master Sword, where it felt earnt in BOTW, and for that matter every other Zelda game for that matter. I just wish I could go back and tell myself to not do the Korok Forest mission, and to wait to discover the truth of this version of the blade, and how it has been restored to its original glory.

I got punished for using the game's biggest strength. I didn't glitch the game, break sequence of code, I simply...explored, and found out revelations of the story at a time I shouldn't have. TOTK is fighting two different philosophies: the freedom of the player to explore whatever they want, whenever they want, and the other being discovering Zelda's past in a way that unfolds in a carefully structured mystery. It feels like the story wants to be more grandiose in the present, but I think it misses the mark on this occasion. Zelda turning into a Light Dragon is one of if not the BIGGEST moment in Zelda lore, having a Princess of Hyrule turn herself into something like that for her specific purpose isn't something that should ever be discovered in the wrong way. It would be like if you discovered that Tetra was Zelda after the first dungeon in Wind Waker, albeit on much less of a scale.

The story itself isn't bad per se, it’s the approach and structure that fails to deliver. If the story had been perceived in a traditional Zelda sense, it would have worked. There are some really strong themes there of the first Kingdom of Hyrule, Ganondorf's transformation into the Demon King, characters like Rauru, Sonia and Mineru who are interesting enough to want to pursue more of. It is all just let down by the delivery for me. I didn't even experience it out of order. Knowing of all the themes running through Zelda's head during the time when I already know her fate just didn't impact me as emotionally as it did. It also didn't help that I experienced these revelations in good time between. Because of the slow nature of my playthrough and having so much time off playing the game through other commitments or even playing other games, it got to the point where I didn't watch the Light Dragon cutscene till about April 2025, over 18 months after finally discovering the Master Sword for myself. Nintendo allowed me to spoil myself and so many others as well, and I'm not pleased about it. For most players, finding the revelation and the Master Sword would have come quite seamlessly after one another. For me, it represented two different parts of my life.

Another thing that gripes me about this approach to storytelling is, well, the lack of Link. I get it, it’s the Legend of ZELDA, and there is a serious push to make the Princess more of a character ever since her 'side-lining' in Twilight Princess. But none of the memories, bar one, even mentions Link, you know, the guy we play as? In BOTW, Link was an ever-present, the memories were a way of restoring his memories. Even if he won't show much emotion, they definitely would have helped him and his motives. If he suddenly discovered amnesia again in TOTK, it wouldn't work, because the memories in that game all revolve around Zelda. Link is the same person if he watches the cutscenes, or if he doesn't. Apart from the fact his girlfriend is now a big dragon, I don't even know how I'd feel if that were me to be fair.

What is even more strange for me is that we as the player can't affect the world that Link roams because of the game's non-linearity, the world and Link for that matter, doesn't care that Zelda is a dragon canonically, when all these fake ones start roaming around important areas. It would have killed me to experience Hyrule Castle with Link already knowing that Zelda was a puppet from Ganondorf. Even from the cutscene of Sonia's death, you could put the dots together and realise that Zelda in the present isn't our Zelda, but there is nothing we as the player can do about it. Why couldn't we just show the cutscenes to Purah at least? They are all saved on her Purah Pad right? Just give it to her for some investigation thing and let her discover them on her own. It shouldn't feel like we should be the only ones discovering these secrets, when the whole of Hyrule would benefit from knowing the truth. It got to the point that I was nulling all of this 'Where is Zelda' vibes because it was boring. The whole quest line with Penn trying to find Zelda sightings knowing it wasn't her was spoilt for me unfortunately, and I was left to rue what it would feel like to still have that same wonder and mystery of the Princess's whereabouts.

This dilemma also creates a distinction and lack of cohesion between us as the player and Link. Before BOTW, we could name Link anything, because he was meant to represent us as the player, and that's why he was mute. But in BOTW, he became a fully-fledged character, separating us from him. It doesn't help that he acts mostly oblivious to Zelda's transformation not just in the moment, but also with people around him. It makes me question; does he even know what I know? Of course, the affection and care for his Princess is clearly there, shown in the final dive where he looks desperate to save her, but it's something I wasn't a fan of during my time of grieving my spoilt game.

The problem with the game's non-linear structure is that a story that has structure seemingly can't work. Whilst the story happened in the past, it is structured from A to B and describes Zelda's journey in the previous version of Hyrule. There has to be a way for these non-linear games and the stories to co-exist, because the Zelda team have had 2 tries at it and failed, and I don't have confidence they will make it third times a charm. I think Zelda fans like me are not looking for a massive, ground-breaking story, but having story events happening in conjunction with what Link does is something we desperately need.

I can't quite remember what happened and how I felt when I eventually found out Zelda was the Light Dragon. I definitely can't remember how I felt when I realised through the Dragonification cutscene, but the actual depiction was not as sad as I thought it was. Of course, it is a powerful moment and emotionally poignant, but I remember my experience with Colgera more than that, because of my tainted experience. It's like before when I said I had spoiled myself with Super Mario Odyssey, but I could get away with that game as there was nothing close to emotional storytelling in that game. If anything, the one thing I remember was wishing I could experience it blind, but I will never be able to do that again. My greed for the Master Sword ended up stabbing me in the back (get it), as despite being mechanically rewarding, it felt emotionally premature.

Despite numerous side-tracking’s, my next step was Goron City, one of my favourite locations in any Zelda game. I have a strong affection for the Gorons, probably because like me they are big guys who look a little funny. I just like how they are just massive rocks. Daruk was my favourite Champion too, and I was excited to see what had changed from BOTW.

What I didn't expect was for drugs to be a major theme of the Goron questline this time around.

Well that's not entirely true. The Gorons are always an interesting race, and it wouldn't surprise me if Darunia from Ocarina of Time had some of this fabled Marbled Rock Roast himself. I thought the plot line was by far the most interesting out of the four regional phenomas, and certainly a curveball from what we had experienced in BOTW. There, Death Mountain was full of lava and often a nightmare to explore without a fireproof elixir or the Flamebreaker armour that was only attainable in Goron City. The lava was caused by the Divine Beast Vah Rudania rampaging round Death Mountain, but now as all of the giant Sheikah tech has been Thanos snapped out of existence, the lava is no more.

It always bugged me that the disappearance of the Sheikah technology was never properly explained in game. I remember looking around for any remnants of the past game, not expecting much but to find almost nothing bar the Skyview Towers was disappointing. Obviously, I wasn't expecting Guardians to make a return as cool as that would have been but having places like the Shrine of Resurrection be totally nullified and just a small pool rubbed me the wrong way.

Back to the Gorons then. Yunobo has never really been my kind of guy. It might have to do with my fondness of Daruk, and Yunobo can't seem to get close to the levels of the Goron champion for me. I don't mind characters that are timid and afraid, yet develop the courage to fight alongside you, it's just some things he does and some things he says that are just plain annoying. Like at Hyrule Castle near the end of the game, when all four sages save you from Ganondorf's gloom again. Whilst everyone is admitting and wary of the threat Ganondorf possesses, Mr Yunobo here is panicking for his life. Did being not only a Champion descendant AND a sage give you any balls? Do Gorons even have balls?

All the other sages are on par or even better in my opinion than the Champions in BOTW. They were fleshed out characters given strength through the spin off Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, but it was only because of their strong performances in BOTW that made them it so rewarding to see more of them. I'm very satisfied if we never see Yunobo again to be frank. Hey, at least he says Silver the Hedgehog's favourite line: "It's no use!."

After saving Yunobo from his mind-control mask, he joins you as you have to scale up a lava-less Death Mountain to get to its crater and dive into the depths to uncover the secrets of the ancients. I will admit, Yunobo's ability is arguably the most valuable in the moments you need it, like breaking rocks or firing at enemies. I did have a lot of fun using him to break massive deposits in the depths, but his combat ability is USELESS. Where Tulin is fantastic with his bow range, sometimes to my detriment as he attacks enemies I have no interest in fighting, Yunobo's AI is utter donkey doodle. It came to the point where I was turning his vow in battles because his presence was a hindrance more often than not. It also doesn't help he's a chunky boy, but what Gorons aren't?

Eventually you take down the 'Boss' at the top of the Mountain and plunge into the Depths for the Fire Temple. No wonder Nintendo used a lot of this area for 'marketing' material for the underground, it's the only remotely 'different' looking environment down there! We'll get to Depths in due course don't worry, just another 200 hours left to talk about first! This was one of my first encounters down there, and boy did it make a good impression on me. Whilst the journey from the chasm to the temple was quite boring, the Temple itself was one of my favourites IF you do it the intended way.

The problem for the Temple, which is a problem I thought was inevitable from the moment I started playing this game, was that it can be totally broken with the game's mechanics and lack of linearity. The dungeon is massively open, with barely any walls caving you in to a particular area, meaning you can traverse it in whatever way fits, and if you were like me and had plenty of hours in the game, you could easily use plenty of Zonai devices to go round it rather than the intended method of Mine carting. Fortunately for me, I'm an idiot, and did things the vanilla way, and got a lot of good use out of the dungeon. I thought its puzzles whilst, once again, had no relation to one another, were well designed and interesting.

I remember struggling a lot with a few of the puzzles but only because my experience with creating devices and using them was limited. After all, my main method of traversing Hyrule so far has been...walking, and the occasional horse ride after I got Zelda's horse back again and called it Link, so Zelda can finally ride h- If anything, the boss was an absolute breeze. It was nice to see Gohma appear again, or a Gohma to be exact. To me it felt like a lot of inspiration from Wind Waker was taken in the bosses, having an Ice Molgera and now an 'Armoured' Gohma in the fire themed dungeon, the Zelda team's got taste!

With that, two dungeons are down and things are looking up for my playthrough. I once again traversed Hyrule in my search for more memories in order before making my way to the third main quest of the game, Zora's Domain. It only took me...(checks notes), 9 months to make it there.

9 months?!? I could have given birth in the time it took me to recruit my newest Sage, but a lot had happened to me in that time. Firstly, Pikmin 4 came out at this time, and this was my jam. As good as TOTK is, and I still think it’s the better game, nothing and I mean NOTHING comes in the way of my Pikmin. Remember when I said I got Pikmin 3 for Christmas in 2013; I finished that game and didn't finish Wind Waker HD. Noticing a pattern? 10 years later, the same thing was happening again. I made that game my identity for a month and unfortunately, I wasn't in the time and space for juggling two games at once. If I were going to play a game on the side, it would have been Smash Bros. or Mario Kart, because Pikmin is a game you need your full attention in.

Ironically, this also came at a time I had more free time. I had quit my job as a bartender due to overworking and well, minimum wage and was free from university from the summer. Surely that would have allowed more time to play games. Nope. I don't work that way unfortunately. I am someone who still and will probably always see gaming as a guilty pleasure. Ever since I came back into the world of academia and University, any time I spend gaming or leisuring to my brain is guilt provoking, and I tell myself I can't do it. It might have to do with not falling back into the trap that led me down in lockdown. Back then, playing all these amazing games, in particular the 3D (and many 2D) Zelda's was rewarding and fulfilling and not guilt provoking because my purpose in life wasn't found yet. Here in 2023, I am on the right track, but playing games for so long reminds me of the unhealthy person I was back then and it becomes hard and near on impossible to feel like playing games is rewarding.

Back to the point, I would limit playing to 2-3 hours a day maximum, even when I had little on. That's probably why progress in TOTK came at such a slow rate. 15 hours a week is nowhere near enough progress towards 100%, and there were plenty of days the Switch was never picked up. It got to September and well, I had unlocked the next memory and found a boat load of Korok Seeds. Nothing really sticks out to me from my playthrough at that time when I was playing it. Of course I was still having fun, but making little progress was becoming tedious and motivation levels started to drop. It didn't help that I was seeing so many games on the horizon that I was really looking forward to that I pre-empted would stop my progress exponentially.

Games like Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Sonic Superstars were coming out within a week of one another, and I knew they were going to take over my life in the same way Pikmin did for a good chunk of time. It almost made TOTK not worth playing because I could already see the month long gap in-between playthroughs, which always makes things harder getting back into the swing of things. Of course, all the mechanics and controls don't leave me so picking the game up isn't difficult. When you build up so much momentum with anything really and then leave it for some time, getting back is always the hardest part, and don't I know it from my university work.

The numbers probably tell the story better than I can. In 2020, my first full year with the Nintendo Switch, I clocked 1,940 hours. That's over 5 hours a day, EACH day that I was spent with the Switch. Those numbers aren't even healthy for a relationship, never mind for a platonic one with a console! Compare that to how many hours I clocked in in 2023, 291, dropping to 191 in 2024, before rising slightly to around 250 in 2025, partly due to the shining new Switch 2 that occupied my summer.

Of course not all of these hours were spent in Hyrule. In total, I have 850 hours between both titles split over four years. The difference is, one half of the total came in 3 months and the other in 3 years. It didn't take me this long because I stopped loving video games. If anything, this entire article probably proves the opposite. What changed was everything around them. Breath of the Wild arrived at a time when I had an almost unlimited amount where I could treat Hyrule as an alternate universe, one where all my fears and worries of the real world can disappear. It became my life in the time I played it.

Tears of the Kingdom couldn't take that handle. Instead, it served as a supplement to the life I was living. It arrived when I was working towards a university degree, working part-time, more responsibilities made it so that every time I played, I got a nagging feeling that every hour spent playing was an hour I should have spent doing something more 'productive'. My relationship with gaming changed during this time. I had found other interests, other passions that meant just as much to me as video games. Tears of the Kingdom accompanied my life in the same vein the Sages did to Link, always being there for when he wanted his adventure to continue. Hyrule was always waiting for me for whenever I wanted to come back. The gaps in between playing in itself, became part of the story. The months I didn't touch the game are equally as important as the ones I did play it in this story, 6 years is a LONG time remember. The person I was when I first ventured into Hyrule is VERY different to the one leaving it!

I know a lot of us might look back fondly at lockdown for some of the moments it gave us during a treacherous time. For example, I remember the four Formula 1 drivers of Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Alexander Albon and George Russell all streaming themselves playing games with one another, something impossible without the pandemic. As many memorable moments I remember, I think a part of me still clings onto that time as a pre-curser to my unhealthy habits, that made me gain weight and put myself in an even worse headspace. My way of combatting that is to limit my screen time, both with video games and other leisure activities, things I would pride myself on living daily on during 2020. I was afraid of allowing myself to become as consumed as I was in 2020, with Breath of the Wild but also my lifestyle as a whole. Of course, being in university meant that that was not going to happen, but I am a man of constant habits, and it's still something I am managing to this day.

There was one thing I remember at this time that interested me about the game deeply, and it so happened to be the place I had been abandoning all this time. The Depths, and in particular, a certain banana-bandit that was thwarting me. One of the stars of the show in TOTK (partly because he remembers what Link did to him in BOTW), Glory to Master Kohga!

One thing I was afraid of when playing TOTK was that the game would fail to be treated as a sequel. Overall, my worries did come true and barely anyone seems to remember the events of BOTW, despite it taking place 7 years after apparently. Except for one magnificent master of the Yiga Clan. I like Kohga in BOTW, but my fondness for his character grew exponentially with Age of Calamity, which despite its canonic-less story, gave Kohga the one thing he was missing, a voice. And what a voice he gets. It sums up the chaotic nature of the man, and I was so looking forward to what he had in store in TOTK.

The Yiga had a major upgrade in the sequel I feel. From being camped almost exclusively inside Gerudo Canyon to being ALL over the Depths thanks to Kohga, I really enjoyed my time with them. For once, I felt compelled to explore the Depths purely for the Yiga questline. As basic and barebones as it was, it was fun to create that sort of structure in a place that rarely has one, bar the two Temples down there. Kohga is his natural goofy self once again, but his boss battles have gone up exponentially. He is the only battle that really uses the auto build and the Zonai devices to a worthy extent, if you exclude Mineru's Construct Battle (that we will get to shortly).

My only negative about the quest was a lack of voice for Master Kohga. He would have been perfect to showcase his anger at Link and the Zonai devices not working for him. But, alas, it was not to be. I purposely limited my exploration of the underground, not to overload or sidetrack myself too much because what was happening above was far more interesting to me. It was also due to the fact that I didn’t feel like the Depths offered me any sense of structure. Whereas in the overworld you are directed to certain areas for quests and what not, in the depths, there is nothing like that for the most part, which was something that put me off.

I am someone who lives for structure, giving my life structure, and that also translates to the games I play. If you couldn’t tell from my playthrough so far, it has A LOT of structure, compared to the lack of it the game presents. Whilst this is something I enjoyed doing on the overworld and in the sky, in the depths, was totally different. Something bugged me about going down there. The lack of any interesting environments, unique to one another, barely any unique characters or questlines or story lore, a lot of repeat bosses and just a gloomy atmosphere as a whole made it so unwelcoming. For that, they did such a good job! I think the Depths are meant to be foreboding, to feel like a place you ought not to be, but for me as an explorer it failed to leave a mark on me, hence why I left 90% of it to the end of my playthrough.

Doing the Yiga questline allowed for that essence of structure to override the lack of motivation and willingness to explore the Depths, purely for Master Kohga’s reactions. That was enough for me to pump a few hours into the story to find out his fate, and it was by far the most enjoyable thing I remember about my exploration down there. Whereas in the overworld, my exploration was driven by curiosity, wondering what’s over that hill, the depths was exploration driven by purpose. I KNEW Master Kohga was in these locations, and I wanted to find the bastard.

I do remember my first foray into the Depths and being mind blown that there was an entirely different world underneath the land of Hyrule. Being an inverse to the land too, mines beneath settlements gave an excellent underlying idea, but, that sense of discovery wore off quicker than Kohga’s rocket launcher. My playstyle massively contradicted the Depths’ purpose. I wanted to explore everything I could in this game, where the overworld wanted me to, the Depths would have told me, you sure? Whereas the land of Hyrule was one meant to be basked and adored, explored to your heart’s content, the Depths became a place that was only ever meant to be visited, not lived in.

Master Kohga wasn’t the only thing I had done down in the Depths in that time, however. Near the end of 2023, somehow when I found the time, I managed to finish my third temple, this time being, the Spirit Temple. Once again, I did things out of order that in theory I was not meant to. I was exploring the Faron region, in particular the Lurelin Village area after uncovering the memory of Queen Sonia’s death, where I discovered a shroud of clouds of Lightning masking a sea of islands. I hadn’t got the Thunder Helm at this point, but I only needed to get to the Dragonhead Island to randomly discover the Head of Mineru’s Construct, and from that point on, it was a pretty straight line through the Construct Factory and the Temple.

I think it goes without saying that the Spirit Temple was one of the more forgettable aspects of the game. Where I can recall all the other dungeons and the stories and questlines revolving around them, I cannot recall anything memorable about the Temple. I barely remembered the Boss until it appeared again in the final area where the Sages leave you with Ganondorf. It probably came at a time I was barely playing the game due to my other commitments, but its lack of identity and well, good design prohibits it from being but a small memory of my playthrough.

But once again, I and the game allowed me to play and observe what is meant to be a late-game challenge much earlier than it was supposed to. Thankfully, the lore that Mineru teaches you is more of the same we had already experienced, rather than a giant brand-new revelation of Zelda becoming the Light Dragon, but it still feels off. I got that weird feeling at the time that I wasn’t meant to get here straight away. I mean, no quest marker was made so obviously I had done things out of sequence. Once again, TOTK had rewarded me for exploring somewhere I probably wasn’t supposed to be yet, while simultaneously allowing me to stumble into another part of its story completely out of order.

This was where I stood as I headed into 2024. Over 150 hours of gameplay, and barely halfway done with the game. It stuck with me the monumental task that lay ahead, especially with my final year of university coming up too. I had started another job at the time, meaning I was making more money that I wanted to spend on upcoming games. TOTK was between a rock and a hard place, and what didn’t help was my stupid decision to replay a certain game from 1998, that was a revolutionary title for its genre, one I had already played before.

If you don’t know, I’m talking about Spyro the Dragon. Just kidding, I replayed Ocarina of Time…again. At the time, I was with my girlfriend, and she was living with me in my university flat. We would spend a lot of time together and one of the things we liked to do was play games (Duh). We played the whole of Mario Bros. Wonder together, but she also wanted to play Zelda games too. However, I was NOT going to streamline my playthrough of TOTK just for her (and quite frankly, not for anyone), so my next best option was in my opinion the definitive Zelda experience for someone like her. It also helped that at the same time, the Zelda movie had been announced, and a lot of people were on the OOT hype train as a lot of people predicted that the movie would take a lot of inspiration from that instalment. I mean, now with the remake on the way, it would make sense…

Regardless, the first two months of 2024 were some of my favourite memories playing games. We went through OOT and then went straight for Majora’s Mask, which unfortunately meant that TOTK had to take a major backseat, I can’t juggle two Zelda’s at once c’mon not even Link could!

One notable thing I do remember about these playthroughs was my enjoyment of the structure and going from one point to the next, and how I tried to relate that into my TOTK journey. But also, there was a lack of wonder or discovery playing these games again. I was often going through things at a rate of knots because I knew what I was doing, where I was going. TOTK is the opposite, where my brain instantly directs me off course to look at something in the distance, to discover the unknown. That sense was what I think was keeping me going with the game, despite the multiple long gaps.

I love both the traditional Zelda’s and the Wild era games, but I don’t want one to become the other. It was enjoyable to appreciate what makes the older games stand out, whilst appreciating what the new games have added. It’s probably why I love both Echoes of Wisdom and A Link Between Worlds so much, both are brilliant examples of marrying the two concepts together, the former especially so, and that’s what makes these games and this franchise so special and meaningful to me.

Another thing that I think was so rewarding and it’s something I have already touched on, was the sense of something is always ready to be collected. Barely anything in both BOTW and TOTK requires you to have a certain ability or number of hearts, excluding the Master Sword, so every time you turn a corner is something awaiting you. The anticipation was almost greater than the actual reward, especially for TOTK, when the wait was so long in between sessions. After collecting 1900 Korok Seeds in the past 6 years, I know of a crap (literally) reward, but that’s the magic of both of these games of suggesting something might be here is pulled off so well. The possibility itself became part of the appeal, and that was the nucleus of my journey.

I eventually picked the game up proper during March 2024, when some of my commitments had ended and I had a slight bit more time on my hands. This is when I finally made my way to Zora’s Domain, the home of Hyrule’s favourite smile and handsome boy toy, Sidon.

One of my core memories with BOTW was my journey towards Zora’s Domain. In that game, the Zora area is where you are hinted towards exploring first, after visiting Kakariko for the first time. I remember everything from that experience. From seeing Sidon at the bridge at the bottom of the path to the Domain, making my way up in a rain-soaked environment, where my hate towards unclimbable surfaces started, seeing the Domain for the first time, learning of Mipha’s relationship with Link from 100 years ago, going to Ploymus Mountain, and that Lynel experience. Looking back, I was so bad at these games. I must have died at least 20 times to that bastard just to get the Shock Arrows. Now, these guys are easy fodder for me, but that is perhaps something I miss. That feeling of facing a god like deity that you have no chance of winning against, was something I rarely experienced in TOTK, because I felt so confident playing the game from day one. Well, apart from the Gleeoks. I will say that they more than made up for the lack of difficulty I imposed on myself simply by doing everything. Unfortunately, Gleeoks are not tied down to any certain main quest, which that Lynel was, which I thought was a missed opportunity. A casual player could do all of the main quests and never face one. The freedom of the game is cool, but it means the main adventure can sometimes avoid some of the game’s best tests of mastery, unless you are a Twilight Princess fan and want the Armour set, you have to beat the King Gleeok in the Depths for the Cap, so if you’re like me, you made it part of your main quest.

I loved everything about the Zora quest in BOTW and remember it so fondly. Those feelings were reciprocated when I returned to Zora’s Domain four years later. Coming back to the Domain felt more like coming home than any other place in Hyrule. More than any other village, more than Hyrule Castle, heck, more than Hateno where Link’s home canonically is, or was, I don’t know if Link and Zelda live together but who cares.

The strongest memories I had with BOTW was when the adventure felt so new, so fresh, and amazingly, when I was at my worst playing it. Now, as I have gotten better at games, in particular Zelda games, I am reminded of a time when this wasn’t the case. As BOTW was so different from the experiences I had had previously at the time, I sucked at it. But with the game’s nature, it kept making me experiment, getting better in the process, and those are the game’s best strengths and arguably where progression shines the most, not from what you are collecting, but how. A game can get so much better the better you are at it, it’s probably why I love Mario Kart so much, I am good at it (most of the time), but there was once a time I wasn’t, and that’s what makes the experiences so worthwhile.

But as competence makes playing more satisfying, it can also remove that fear and wonder. That feeling of challenge, an overwhelming sensation that your opponent has you outmatched. Even take the final Ganondorf fight, the extended health bar for as bad ass as it is, didn’t faze me, because I was well too experienced to lose to him. I was full of weapons, materials, meals and potions that nothing was going to get in my way. But a slight part of me wishes I felt threatened by it, not having the upper hand in battles made winning so much better.

The (very small) problem I have with TOTK and its combat, is that it’s no different to BOTW at its core. Especially beating Lynels for example. The process is the exact same, just if anything, with more items at your disposal. Despite losing all of his hearts and materials at the start of TOTK, I hadn’t lost what BOTW had taught me. Link might have felt different, but I certainly didn’t, and maybe that’s why bosses didn’t have that staying power on me, because I rarely struggled. Only the first few Gleeok encounters were worth noting for me. There is a strange joy in being awful at a game you’re falling in love with!

Back to Zora’s Domain in BOTW, I remember loving the environment so much. I am a sucker for water levels in video games, unless its from a Sonic game, then you can forget it, sorry Hydrocity Zone. The aesthetic of water in video games is something I love, and Zora’s Domain is a prime example of that. It looks so elegant, so classy, so well looked after, and the Zora are so cool too. I mean, of course they are, Sidon exists. No wonder he was such a fan favourite in BOTW. Out of all the champions/sages, he might be my favourite, edging out Urbosa and Daruk. He is just that guy. He was the first character I remember encountering “on my own” in BOTW, as I had been directed to Kakariko and Impa from King Rhoam before. Sidon was my first “Wow” character I ran into, and what a character.

Of course, it helps that he is quite handsome I will admit, and who can say no to that smile :D. You have to bear in mind, that my experience with the series up until the point of BOTW was half of Wind Waker. Characters like Tetra, Aryll, Medli, Makar really didn’t make a huge impression on me, partially because I didn’t stick their stories out, and after I finished Wind Waker, I grew a fondness for their characters. Sidon became one of my first major characters I met when Zelda became my franchise, and of course, the Zora weren’t present in Wind Waker apart from the Sage I can’t remember but also didn’t get far enough to see. Seeing him again after so many years did feel like seeing an old friend more so than anyone else in Tears of the Kingdom, and seeing his progression mirrored my own. We are both in different times of our lives. Not saying we grew up together, but we both changed from the time we first met, and that’s something rewarding especially for my playthrough. Sidon and the Domain became a place that reminded me why I fell in love with this version of Hyrule in the first place.

Coming back evoked a feeling of returning somewhere familiar after my own life had moved considerably forward. Feelings of being back in 2020 came back, now this time with the experience of over 500 hours playing with this Link and all of his cool abilities. It was almost nostalgic, which seems unfathomable. 3 years can’t evoke senses of nostalgia surely? Well, I don’t think there is an age limit to nostalgia. There are moments in my life in the past 3-5 years I am nostalgic over, going to my first F1 Grand Prix for example. For my version of Link, I feel like he would have felt nostalgic as well, assuming he liked Sidon as much as I did. It was also great that the Zora actively acknowledge your journey in BOTW, saving the Domain from Vah Ruta, with the statue of Link riding Sidon. No other village does that, it is a great example of the sequel continuity that I so desperately wanted more of from the rest of Hyrule, especially for big key areas. In fact, barely any other characters remember Link from saving their asses in the past. Mind you, there are some new characters that weren’t present in BOTW, so I will let them slide. One of which lies in Zora’s Domain and so happens to be the person Sidon fell in love with. NOT LINK???

I actually like Yona, although she was barely utilised apart from being kind wife of Sidon’s. That’s ok though, we are here for the main course. The actual quest this time was nowhere near as good unfortunately suffice to say. It had so much potential, exploring the bottom of the same area that Divine Beast Vah Ruta was in BOTW, but the area was so underbaked. The puzzles beforehand were cool, shooting one of the King’s Scales through the tear drop was pretty cool. But I can’t lie, going up to the Sky, up to Wellspring Island, was so underwhelming.

I’m usually a sucker for anti-gravity situations; Super Mario Galaxy is my favourite game of all time for crying out loud. But this just felt so clunky. Some of the puzzles were cool, but so unmemorable. I largely just used a lot of rockets to traverse upwards towards the Temple, which I already knew wasn’t going to impress me from the way it looked. Water Temples have never been Zelda’s strong suits. Even though the one in OOT gets way too much slack, ones like the Great Bay, or Lakebed aren’t much better, and I have to say, TOTK adds another to the list.

What a letdown of a dungeon for my boy Sidon. I’m glad this isn’t the place I headed to first, and the Rito area was instead, because this left a nasty impression of dungeons. Not only was the dungeon able to be cheesed massively, but it also just lacked a theme and identity, where the Wind and Fire Temple prior definitely did. Even Water Temples of the past have had good theming and was pleasant to look at. This one was forgettable in so many ways, and that transcends to the boss itself. I’m glad for Sidon’s Sage ability, purely for this boss fight. I think they purposely dragged this boss out with the sludge purely so it wouldn’t last two seconds, because there is nothing memorable about Mucktorok. Sure, having a boss designed on one of the series most iconic enemies, I mean, what enemy has Link said he’s so hungry he could eat one of them? But it’s happened before, in Minish Cap, and done so much better.

The good thing was that another big hurdle towards my journey of completion had been overcome, Sidon had become my latest ally that I turned off because he hogged the screen, and also the fact that only one more dungeon area was left to discover, all the way in the South-West corner of the map, Gerudo Town. But that wasn’t going to be quite straightforward. I set myself a goal to leave that area till the end, partially because I was expecting a difficulty rise given the nature of Thunderblight Ganon and Divine Beast Vah Naboris in Breath of the Wild. I felt like having that area to end on, would not only feel rewarding as the Desert would be notoriously easier to explore compared to the mountains of other regions (oh boy I was wrong), as well as having one of my favourite areas to rediscover as a sense of reward for making it all the way there, as the climax of my journey in the main land of Hyrule was to come to a conclusion.

Gerudo became my reward for finishing the Surface, however, I had to complete all the other conditions before I could consider venturing onto the desert path. Completing all the other memories, getting all the other Skyview Towers, getting as many Korok Seeds in the areas I had discovered, doing all the side quests, shrines, anything that had a reward I wanted it. My completionist brain knew that I had to have something fulfilling towards the end of my ‘surface’ journey, hence why a dungeon and a storyline makes perfect sense, and the fact I was looking forward to seeing Riju and best sand seal Patricia again! I gave myself the mindset of not allowing myself to go there too early because I ‘hadn’t earned it’ yet. This wasn’t something Nintendo told me to do; I imposed it on myself. Transforming TOTK’s freedom into my own progression system.

So that was it then, I had a plan set in stone to make that my mission of clearing the Gerudo area and the final main quest at the end of my journey exploring the game as I have been for 200 hours at this point. With that then, my adventure had begun, it doesn’t sound so hard right? Give it another year and I might be at the finish line?

No, try another year. I finally reached Gerudo Town in March 2026, 2 years after finishing the Water Temple.

A large part of my playthrough was spent delaying the inevitable. Eventually, this game would finish, there would be nothing left to do. No more inches of Hyrule to explore, nothing more to collect, nothing more to see. Every time I put the controller down after a session was a step closer to this inevitability that I didn’t want to oppose for so long, and I keep wondering to myself why that is. With other video games, I have never had this sensation, this feeling. This existential dread to not want to finish it. Every game I finish I look forward to finishing for a multitude of reasons. It could be to see and talk about the discourse online if it is a recent release, to watch reviews or reactions on YouTube, to push me to find something new, but not with Tears of the Kingdom. My enjoyment with the game was making me delay the end, and the fact I was taking so damn long playing it for a start.

For so long, I thought the destination was more important than the journey. Rolling credits was so overwhelming to me that the way I got there was getting more and more complicated by the day. I felt like prolonging my adventure was keeping me sane, knowing that there is something there that needs finishing was enough motivation for me to edge myself closer little by little to the end goal, without feeling like it was too far away. At the time of March 2024, I would say I was 50% done with the game. I had around 500 Korok seeds, all the armour sets available in the overworld, so many locations and bosses complete. I was set for a while.

I think the main reason that put me off wanting to beat the game was the fear of having nothing left, especially in Zelda. Looking back, it was lucky the time I played Breath of the Wild was the time after the news of a sequel had been announced, so even finishing that game still felt like there was more to come eventually down the road, even if it took 3 years. Even then, I still had all the other Zelda games, 2D and 3D to revisit for the first time, so finishing BOTW was a motivation for me to keep playing and experiencing this franchise that I have just fell in love with. With Tears of the Kingdom, there wasn’t anything like that. Yes, we had Echoes of Wisdom come out, and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment in the time of TOTK’s release, and now with the new Ocarina of Time remake scheduled for this year, but these games aren’t part of this chapter of my life. Finishing TOTK would signal the end of this part of my life, going full circle after starting with BOTW.

Of course, I am sure the Zelda team are hard at work with the next 3D Zelda game for Switch 2, and will more than likely be a masterpiece, but that will happen later down the line, when I could be a totally new person. If release schedules for 3D Zelda games remain consistent, the game will likely release in 2029. I will be 27, and more than likely a totally different person to the man I am now, just like I am completely different now to the person I was when I beat BOTW for the first time in 2020. Moments or chapters of our lives can be symbolised and timestamped with the things we experience, especially with media, and video games for me are at the forefront of that argument. I was 7 years old when I beat Mario Galaxy for the first time, and I still remember that so fondly. Every main Mario release signifies a chapter of my life, and I feel that way for Zelda now. There will never be another Zelda game experienced by this exact version of me. Beating Tears of the Kingdom was in essence, the closure of this chapter of my life…but I wasn’t ready yet.

It might just be my completionist mindset, but in a game where there is so much to do, having nothing left to do feels so demoralising, like it wasn’t intended to be that way. In smaller games, completing it often doesn’t feel like much, but in a game as big as TOTK, doing everything means more than percentage numbers on a screen, or boxes ticked, or medals and rewards obtained. It means the lack of new things to do. When something is so predominantly part of your life as completing both BOTW and TOTK have been for me in these past 6 years, having nothing left in these massive worlds feels worse than the things I have collected and have experienced. For six years, and for three of those in TOTK exclusively, Hyrule had always promised me that there was something else out there. Finishing everything meant eventually breaking that promise myself.

I was at war with myself, in two minds wanting to do everything but at the same time, not wanting nothing left for me to do. My completionism was somehow doing two completely contradictory things at once. Every box I ticked brought me closer to the ending, but my insistence on ticking every single box made sure that ending stayed further away. The very thing pushing me towards finishing Tears of the Kingdom was also protecting me from having to finish it.  It was so difficult, because the more I played the game, the more I realised just how unique this experience would be. Every discovery was something I could never discover for the first time again. Every puzzle would never be fresh again, every music theme, everything. The reward for experiencing everything was losing the ability to experience anything new.

I wasn’t scared of never being able to play TOTK again, I was scared of never being able to discover TOTK again. I’ll never be able to hear Dragon Roost’s motif in Colgera’s theme without knowing its coming. I will never be able to wonder if a certain puzzle works for a shrine, or if a certain item can be used for a quest. It comes back to the essence of wonder that will be gone on second playthroughs. Doing everything made this worse by the day, but I knew I had to keep going with this mindset because I was so driven in the first place, and when I start something, I always finish it.

As I said, progress took a LOOOONG time, and it wasn’t meant to be this way. I was still enjoying the hell out of the game, albeit with not as many ‘exciting’ things to do as dungeons, but I was still getting my fill. I remember going back to Tarrey Town for the first time in around summer of 2024, one of my favourite parts of this duology. Like Zora’s Domain, it felt like coming home for a different reason. This is the place I helped create, and to see the development was so rewarding. Can you tell I like it when TOTK calls back to its prequel?

Unfortunately, that is the only real thing I remember from my playthrough at the time. I am always someone who enjoys screenshotting on my Nintendo Switch, whether it be key moments or to remember something, I get a lot of use out of the Capture button. But I only recorded 2 screenshots between March 2024 and March 2025, the reveal of Zelda’s transformation for me. I don’t remember a whole abundance of what I even played during this time. I remember Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door came out and that took a chunk of time to beat, and I finally got around to beating Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed, but other than that, I wasn’t playing much and the hours I showed before tell that better than I could.

I suppose I was travelling a bit during that summer, and the essence of the Switch was dying down around this time. The Switch 2, or at that time, “The Successor to the Nintendo Switch” was soon to be announced and attention switched a lot to speculation of that rather than the console we currently had. This got me thinking, would Tears of the Kingdom get a Switch 2 edition? Maybe 60fps and a resolution increase would finally persuade me to jump back in for good, because as it stood, I was only dipping my toes in rather than getting wet. There was heavy rumours that BOTW was to get that treatment, so it was reasonable to expect the same for Tears.

This was also around the time I entered my final year of university. That, coupled with my commitments with American Football at the time gave me any leeway with my Switch, and it started collecting dust. It was only after March, when my final project was submitted and my football season had ended, that I could take a moment to breathe. Of course, this is when I finally got back into the swing of things with TOTK and discovered Zelda’s revelation.

When I did watch the cutscene, due to the long gap of playing, I struggled to resonate with it in the way I had planned. Think about it. I went on earlier about my connection with this iteration of Princess Zelda, the journey her and I had been on, and to see her make such a demanding and cruel sacrifice for her Kingdom and for Link, as heartbreaking as it was, didn’t get to me like I thought it should. I’m not the most emotional person in the world, although I have had my fair share of cries when experiencing video games. I still remember my exact reaction to THAT moment in Xenoblade 3 Chapter 5 which had me bawling for the heavens, and certain endings to games have given tears to the eyes. It is so nice to see people react to Zelda’s sacrifice in the way it was intended. Despair, heartache, tragedy, sorrow, all these feelings that are advocated so well with most people I know. But not for me, due to the nature of me already knowing her fate. Of course, the scene itself is gut-wrenching, but it could have been so much more impactful for me had the game allowed me to experience it in its full intention.

It’s not all doom and gloom of course. By the time this had happened, the Switch 2 had been unveiled and planned for release in the summer, with both BOTW AND TOTK receiving Switch 2 upgrades. This was exactly what I needed to bring me back, is what I thought would be the case. A new Zelda notes thing too? It looked brilliant. So why did I do a full replay of Zelda: Wind Waker before even touching TOTK Switch 2 edition??? Again, it all comes round to this idea of stalling, delaying the inevitable. Wind Waker was cosy, comforting. It was something I was familiar with. Finishing it didn’t seem like as big of a deal as I had envisioned TOTK would be. I was doing everything to stop myself from committing to finishing this game.

It’s ironic that the game I failed to finish as an 11-year-old was the game I retreated to because I didn’t want to finish Tears of the Kingdom. At that time, Zelda hadn’t grabbed me as a franchise, hadn’t pulled me in like it’s older brother Mario. 13 years later, it means as much to me as any piece of media in my life, and its probably why I used Wind Waker as an escape mechanism. It held my attention when I needed something to stop me from finishing Zelda’s biggest game.

Unfortunately, that was more of an overarching feeling for me at this time, which stopped me from coming back to the game. I was nowhere near approaching the end game of course, but for the first time in my playthrough, it was on my mind. Giving myself a small ‘end goal’ of getting to Gerudo Town was in itself a small ‘finish’, but it signalled that things were coming to an end. At one point, I would have to finish the game. But rather than enjoying this feeling, I let it linger to the point it put me off, because I didn’t want the game to be over, I wanted to keep exploring and discovering.

It also didn’t help that 2025 was a terrible year for my wallet when it comes to video games. Not only was Mario Kart World a mainstay in my game rotation, but Donkey Kong also Bananza AND Hollow Knight Silksong were two games that I had to get my hands on and play. DK should need no introduction; it gave me that 3D Mario fix that I had been missing whilst also being so good and so unique in the process. The games came out perfectly for each other, as the day I finished Bananza was the day before I started Silksong. Hollow Knight as a franchise was in a similar position to Zelda as in, these two series had games that took so long to come out that I played the first one to get myself prepared for the second one. What’s different about Silksong compared to TOTK is probably that Zelda means more than just a franchise to me now. Silksong for as amazing as it was, felt miniscule in comparison to TOTK as a representation of me and who I am, and who I was when I first started playing these games. I got done with that game in January, and it is one of my favourite games of all time.

Finishing Silksong in a relatively short time span of five months didn’t give me any negative feelings of dread or the fact that, there’s nothing left to do. Partially because DLC had already been announced by the time I had finished it, but also, this series might not last forever. It probably will because it keeps getting better and racks more money in from the developers. But compared to Zelda, which will be a part of Nintendo’s identity until they die, Hollow Knight might not last as long. Still, I didn’t feel as much remorse for finishing it as I did Zelda, but with the game out of the way, there weren’t many distractions left for me to face. I had to address the elephant in the room eventually.

Thankfully, my memory of playing TOTK this year is much better than the vividness of the two years prior. I had slowly been chugging along at the game here and there, unlocking the last few Sky Towers and exploring these areas fully. My penultimate region I explored was that of West Necluda and in particular, Kakariko Village. The area that you are guided to going first on your journey in BOTW, was the one that I experienced near the end of my playthrough in TOTK made it feel like we were going full circle. I remember spending so much time there in BOTW, both in my original playthrough and my other saves where I would fool around in the area just because I enjoyed it so much. It’s not as fresh in TOTK unfortunately, even with the Zonai Ring Ruins inhabiting the land, but it was nice to feel welcomed back.

With that area concluded, I could now set my sights on the place I had been putting off for over 2 years. Gerudo Town, and the final main story quest, was finally underway.

At this point, a big psychological change had occurred for me with my playthrough. For 2 years, Gerudo Town was a destination, a goal, and end to a part of the journey, even if there is still a long way to go. Now, I had reached it, I felt rewarded, I could experience a cutscene again, experience part of the narrative that I had been withholding for quite some time. I finally felt like narratively speaking, I was making progress. But there was something else underlying that was way more important. Knowing that after Gerudo, there was nothing left of the overworld to explore. Of course, I had definitely missed plenty of things, as I was nowhere near the Korok count I had been expecting, considering I had explored everything I had, at least I thought. But after I had explored the area, nothing. I had conquered the Sky and the Surface to its extreme, and only the Depths remained.

I was approaching my own endgame.

Of course, I still had to explore all of the Gerudo area, Desert and part of the Highlands included, as well as the main quest and dungeon. I have to say, given two years of waiting, I wasn’t let down by this area. I am a sucker for Gerudo areas in Zelda games, especially ones done right. Of course, Gerudo Valley from OOT comes to mind for the music alone, but I always think Desert themed dungeons are up there with some of the series best. The Spirit Temple from OOT is my favourite in that game, same with the Arbiters Grounds from Twilight Princess, and Vah Naboris was my favourite Divine Beast from BOTW, I had high hopes for this iteration of Desert Temple.

At first, I was not a fan of the whole sandstorm in the area, that prohibited me from making much progress exploring but if anything, made me want to do the main quest straight away to wipe the area from the blizzards. It was great to see Riju again, now much older, she has finally grown into her role as Gerudo Chief. It’s hard being the descendant of Urbosa, as that is such a hard role-model to try and replicate, but I think Riju does just fine. She shows a lot of character development across both games, and especially between instalments she has grown not just in size but in wisdom as well. Kind of like me, just without the wisdom. Where in BOTW, she felt like a kid’s first rodeo, now she seems perfectly accustomed to the role and I love that for her. Just a shame Patricia isn’t used as much in the main story this time around.

Having Gerudo Town appear shrivelled and empty gave me more motivation than any other area to clear it off its decay. I thought the whole quest leading up to the dungeon was fun, even if I find the Gibdo’s in this game quite poor and non-threatening. Unlocking the Temple and fighting the boss before you even step foot in it was refreshing, even if the surprise at the end was already kind of spoiled, it gave me a good surprise and sense of expectation for the challenge that lied ahead. I think the Lightning Temple is my favourite dungeon in the game. It’s still nowhere near the series best, but it has some really solid ideas that are implemented well and with some real challenge that other dungeons really lacked. I had a blast playing it, using Riju’s ability whilst clunky to deploy was enjoyable to use and exploit, and the boss was fun. I was finally rediscovering my love for the game after not committing myself enough to play enough.

With the dungeon complete and Gerudo Town restored, my final Sage was unlocked and thus began the beginning of the end. I had just one area to explore before it was all said and done. It did end up taking me a small bit of time to get everything I wanted done in the area. You can blame University for that, doing a Masters’ doesn’t half take its toll. No wonder they call it the Master Sword! Oh and Tomadochi Life as well, that took a lot of time to play too.

By the time I had finished my exploration of the last area, it was the end of May. I could see the end in sight, kind of. Just because I had explored everything through my own eyes, didn’t mean I had experienced everything the game had to offer. No one’s perfect, and I am sure there were people that had similar experiences to me. Not using a guide and experiencing things completely on your own was bound to result in a few mistakes and a few things missed here or there. When I saw my Korok collection after exploring what I thought was everything, I see my counter and can barely believe what I saw. I had barely cracked the 800 mark. I was still nearly 200 off. How? I had explored everything, my Hero’s Path says so! At this point, I was at a wits end, I can’t rediscover everything blindly again just to find things I knew were missing. I had to look elsewhere for help, for the first time in my playthrough.

Thankfully, as I was using the new and improved Switch 2 version, it came with a very handy feature, Zelda Notes. For those unaware, this is basically a guide within a guide. It details everything about your playthrough, both in stats and achievements, but also collects everything on its very own map that you can compare with your in-game one. It tracks EVERYTHING that counts to 100% completion, from Shrines, Towers, Lightroots, to Korok Seeds, Bosses, Quests, even Addison signs and Bubbul Gems, remember them? I made a bold decision that pained me to do, to finally finish everything on the Surface and in the Sky with these handy compendium.

I was finally admitting that the end was approaching. After playing the game my way, with my own rules, regulations and schedules, I had done everything I could do in the overworld that I thought was possible. I knew my time was finite and that I couldn’t go around doing it all again, purely because that sounds torturous, even though this game is fantastic. I was at a point where I was all experienced out. I had my fill exploring this giant map for all its goodies, experiencing it on my own unique and sometimes complicated terms, so getting help did not invalidate the things I had done previously. I had to use assistance to give me that final push, and Zelda Notes was just the thing I needed. The rules I had implemented and been a part of me for three years now had to be broken somehow, even if it hurt to break. However, it was also a great motivator for me for having memories unlocked as well, with notes from Rauru, Zelda and MASTER KOHGA(!!!!!!) to explore and check out.

It did help still that the app replaced my own structure with its own. It gave me numbers, lists, locations, objectives, things that I can mark as complete. Even if it was a total shift from the structure I had been following in the previous 300 hours of gameplay, it was a streamlined, intense one that still gave me that satisfaction and discovery, just slightly nuanced due to it guiding me there rather than me discovering things on my own. Where once, that wonder motivated me to discover, to find out about the unknown. That magic was the firepower that set alight my playthrough, that sense of adventure and discovery was born from that which Nintendo so expertly perfected. That exploration carried me for so long, but it had taken me as far as it could possibly go. It tried its hardest to get to the finish line but stumbled at the final hurdle. It now needed something to give a shoulder of support to get there. My motivation had changed. It became the lack of the unknown, for getting what you already know is there. To increase a number, a fulfilment, a step towards completion, CERTAINTITY. Zelda Notes gave me certainty that had been missing for my entire playthrough. Of course, I was going to discover Koroks, treasures, bosses, but what exactly was never set in stone. This new approach told me to the dime exactly what it was that I could expect, it gave structure to an ending that, until then, still felt endless.

It shows how far I had come on my journey that there was no guilt or bad feelings for using an app as a guide, when at one point, it would have felt like cheating myself out of the experience. At the time, I felt so proud of what I had achieved and accomplished in this world across those 300 hours that trying again would have done more harm than good. Like a ketchup bottle, I oozed everything out of this world that I could get, there were just some parts that weren’t coming out without some help, so I needed help to wipe the bottle dry. I could have easily kept to my stubborn ways of going again to find everything I missed, but in essence, the rules that helped make TOTK so special to me eventually became rules that were preventing me from ever completing it. I had to adapt if I was going to get over the line. Asking for help finding what I’d missed couldn’t take those hundreds of hours away from me. I didn’t change the rules because I failed to follow them. They had simple served their purpose.

If I hadn’t used the app, I would still be playing the game to this day, instead of writing about my experience completing it. That’s purely because of one glaring issue. I thought I had done so much in this game, so when I opened up the notes app for the first time, scrolled to the map and saw my completion percentage was in the 50’s, I was gobsmacked. 300 hours, and only 50% complete with the game?!?! Well, it wasn’t really a true statistic. That is only a map percentage, which doesn’t include certain things like armour sets and upgrades, recipes, memories or compendium entries. It isn’t a perfect representation of how much I had actually accomplished, because in essence, I had done so much more than that. But instead of telling myself I was halfway there, only 300 more hours to go, something changed inside of me.

Where once I would wonder how much I had actually done in the game, pondering to myself how much I had left to explore, finally seeing that number gave me the fire to do something about it, to get that number to 100%, however long it took. The sense of wonder and uncertainty of what was left to discover was equally matched by the knowledge and certainty of knowing exactly how far I had to go. TOTK went from this vast open world with so many things to do, to a checklist, a finite number of things I had to conquer. Despite what the number said, I was in the final stretch, I was going to finish this game sooner or later.

Chapter Five – The Final Battle

When I first started Tears of the Kingdom, I didn’t care how long it took me to complete for one sole reason. I didn’t want the feeling, the sensation, the wonder to end. 3 years later, that mindset had finally run its course. No longer was I thinking about what I would do if I ever finished the game, I was now wondering how I was going to finish that game. Remember that mind clash I was having in the previous chapter? About my brain being at war deciding if I wanted to finish the game or not? There was an eventual winner, and it was going to carry me to that 100% goal no matter what condition I was in.

I had finally found it, the motivation I had been missing for so long. But, whilst I found this, I lost something that I had been holding near and dear to me this whole time. That feeling of still having things to do in this game, the wonder. Not only did it lose the battle in my mind, but it also got neglected. I was no longer thinking about after the end, my only target was indeed, the end itself, and that’s something worth thinking about once we hit credits, in about 5,000 words from now more than likely.

I was very lucky I was in a time when a lot of my commitments had subsided. University had finished; I had more free time, yet I still took quite a while to get everything wrapped up. Hunting everything down on the map was seeing visible progress with every icon fading, it became more rewarding than beforehand. It also helped that I was so well equipped, I could finally traverse this world in the way I had always wanted to, with cool Zonai gadgets of course. My playthrough for the most part had neglected a large part of these devices, mainly because I hadn’t been to the Depths enough to increase my energy cells. I just didn’t feel the need to use shortcuts and advancements to traverse the world, I wanted to be plain and vanilla.

Now, the shackles had been released, the grips had been loosened. This world that I so intricately explored was no longer bound by my way of doing things. I could finally let loose and use the game’s unique features to my advantage, rather than leaving them to lay dormant. I never truly experimented enough with the Zonai Devices or for that matter, Autobuild.  I’m old-school in that sense, I’d rather the developers lay out to me their ways of doing things rather than giving me so many options that sometimes it becomes overwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, seeing so many interesting and unique creations on social media, especially when the game was at its peak interest, was something to behold. It just never tickled my fancy, I would rather walk or hitch a horse around Hyrule, in the hope I don’t miss anything.

There was no sense of urgency to check every nook and cranny now. I was able to explore in whatever weird and wacky I thought best. I started using these gadgets to my advantage, both in combat and traversal. What I thought would be trivial ended up elevating my experience even further and made me question if I had discovered this too late. I think the main downfall of the Zonai devices are that none are required for really anything major, especially when it comes to beating the game. They are merely a tool to aid you in whatever way you see fit. I think it had its advantages and disadvantages, for me most of my playthrough would have been unaffected had they not been a part of the game.

All except for the glorious hoverbike. If you’ve played TOTK, you know of this masterpiece of a vehicle invention. During my final 100 hours, I used this predominantly as a way to travel this world I had oozed so many hours into already. No longer was walking a suitable option. Where once it supported discovery, now it would just slow completion down. That’s what made the hoverbike so useful, getting from one point to another so seamlessly, it made me feel like a speedrunner, albeit with a 300 hour time. But it also represented a philosophy change, the old me didn’t want to miss anything, whereas now I already know what I needed. Every time I picked up my controller, percentages were rising. It was still a slow process, taking a few months to get everything done. But eventually, I got to a point where there was nothing left on both the Sky and Surface.

That was it. I had completely obliterated this new version of Hyrule, with nothing left to check off, nothing left to discover. As bittersweet as it was at the time, I had no time to rest as there was still one big thing nagging me, one big entity I had put off for the majority of my playthrough, one that I could not avoid addressing any further, the Depths. The one place I had put off purely because unlike the world above, it didn’t invite me to explore, to see what lurked in every corner, to see what I was missing. Just like Link, I had to build up the courage to go down there and see it for myself.

I did have one question I had to address before I started my exploration. I could’ve opted out of using Zelda Notes and explored it in a similar vein to Hyrule, or I could’ve streamlined my experience with the app and get done much quicker. I think you can tell based on when this is going out the answer to that question. Of course there isn’t as much to explore in the Depths, no sidequests or shrines or Koroks. It lacked the originality that made the overworld so magical to explore, it lacked that inviting nature. I didn’t feel pleased to go down there, I wasn’t compelled to see what it had to offer. I had been putting this area off for a large part of my playthrough, purely because of it’s unwelcoming atmosphere, but it was part of the completionist process. I mean heck, Ganondorf is there so I had to go down there eventually.

The time was now July 2026, and my venture into the Depths had just begun. After seeing what lay ahead in terms of things I needed to check off my list, it became apparent that there was not much diversity in the underlayer. Most parts will look the same, and at the point I was at with my playthrough, I wasn’t as disappointed as I thought I would be. The only real downside was that having a second map in the scale of Hyrule meant traversing it was a nightmare and took a lot longer than I had thought. I thought 20 hours would suffice to get everything I needed done, to check everything off. I didn’t get anywhere close to that target.

But look, at this point, it was all a numbers game. I had broken down everything I needed to get and was approaching this mission finally as a completionist. For so long, I was simply basking in this new world of Hyrule, picking up things as I went and strolling around leisurely with no end goal in sight. That had come and gone, and now the ambition was pointing me towards having nothing left to do. I had had my fun, now it was time to knuckle down and truly see what my completionist mindset is made of.

The Depths took me a solid month to really fulfil and extract everything out of there. Not only did I have memories to pick up, Yiga camps to exploit, bosses to slay, treasures to find, but I was also at this point trying to piece all of the puzzles of completionist together, to truly work out how long I had left with this game. I was dipping in and out of the Depths, to gather materials or weapons or visit the Great Fairy for armour upgrades. When I did simmer down for a Depths session, I barely got as much done as I wanted. A three hour session could only make me complete a tenth of the map at best. Sometimes you forget just how big the world is until you try and do everything all at once.

Regardless of how long it was taking, I was happy with the progress I was making and was committed to the task at hand. It no longer felt unachievable and instead felt like a goal I was going to get to more and more each day. What felt like a fever dream just the year before when I took a prolonged break was now within reach, and the train wasn’t stopping off anytime soon!

I have to say for as lacklustre as the Depths appears, I didn’t mind my time with it. Sure, it’s not pretty to look at, and the locations do become mundane after a while, but exploring them in the way I did probably makes me appreciate them more. If I had done what I did with Hyrule and explored them without a guide or a clue, I would have spent a lot of time finding nothing interesting. I would imagine more often than not getting disappointed at not finding anything interesting and instead wondering why I spent so long for no reward. Knowing that I was guaranteeing that reward and that burst of enjoyment from finding it was pleasing in its own right. For the first time in my playthrough, the confirmation had outweighed my sense of discovery.

There was nothing to write home about in the Depths, hence why I was glad to use a guide to help me in my mission. Nothing that I hadn’t experienced before. It not only freshened up my experience playing the game, but also valued my time already spent even more, as I dread to think how unenjoyable my playthrough would have been if I had used Zelda Notes the entire time, especially for my first time. Although I’m sure there will be a time I get an urging sensation to come back and use Zelda Notes for an entire fresh playthrough, maybe in a few years.

Little by little I would chip away at that percentage all the way till eventually, after what felt like so long, it finally reached that coveted 100%. It was easily the most boring part of the playthrough so far, hence why even though it was a month ago I can’t remember much of note from it. But the most important thing was, it was done. 100% of Tears of the Kingdom, I had completed what I had set out to do. I was ready to finally put an end to this, beat this burden that has been with me for the best part of three years, ready to experience the finale of what is now one of my favourite games of all time. Except…I wasn’t done, no way Jose. I had only just started my journey to 100% completion.

It’s fair to say that I probably went against Nintendo’s ideals in my playthrough. Of course, they designed these worlds to be explored however the player may fancy, but I think it’s fair to say I took this to its extremities. It ended up with me eventually having 100% of the map completed sure, Nintendo told me that I had 100% the game and that there was nothing left to do before heading to Ganondorf. Beating the game would have shown that number in the game, in the same way the percentage counter comes up for Breath of the Wild too. But Nintendo’s way of 100% a game isn’t the same way I was 100% this game. When I mean everything, I mean everything.

There was still so much that needed doing to even break my own official threshold of 100% completion. The map is merely a tracker for things achievable, for things to collect there, which fails to include quite a tedious, cumbersome number of tasks required to finish. Take for example, cooking recipes. Despite not counting towards Nintendo’s method of completion, it counts as a number on the recipes screen hence why I needed to get them all done. As well as this, all armour pieces that could be upgraded, will be upgraded to the highest possible level. I had to farm endless rupees for completing the Hyrule Compendium, because nothing says I love this game more than paying to get cool photos instead of taking awful ones yourself.

I think also a part of me wasn’t quite to accept it yet. Not only was I accepting the success and accomplishments of completion, but I was also accepting finality in a way, in a way that felt like losing, even if I wasn’t. I was succeeding so completely that I was removing the thing that had kept the game alive for me. By not having anything left, I had gone against my entire rulebook that had kept me from getting to this point. I had shied away from the impending nature of nothingness. The fact that everything has an end at some point, was something that for some reason, Tears of the Kingdom was making so hurtful and was so damaging to me. I think I know why now.

I don’t think it took me three years to beat Tears of the Kingdom because I was taking my time with it, exploring it to its full extents, both high above the clouds and down below the Depths. For a large part of my playthrough, I was finding reasons not to play the game, to not fulfil my requirements, to not have nothing left to do in this game. I had spent years avoiding whilst simultaneously always getting closer every time I played the game. It became a game I enjoyed taking breaks with. I enjoyed separating with it for time to time. Knowing that I could always come back to it and trickle my way through the game at whatever pace my heart desired was and is one of the game’s greatest strengths. I didn’t want that taken away from me. But at the same time, I wanted to beat Ganondorf so freaking bad.

So there I was, with only a few steps in between me and the finale. Only a few more things to tick off. However, me being me, I couldn’t have left the worst thing to fully complete till the end could I? I did. Not only did the recipes take me an age to do, partially because I never really ate anything that extravagant in either Wild era game. It would usually be loads of meat, greens that gave me full health recovery, or stamina foods. I didn’t realise there were SO MANY different recipes I could create. I didn’t even know Pizza was a thing in Hyrule!

And thus starts the final countdown and more importantly, the grind. For the first time in my entire 350 hours of playtime, I had to grind for completion. This became by far the most tedious part of the playthrough, but I am glad it came at a time it did. Had I not left this to the last minute, where everything I had built up over the past three years relied on it, the motivation would have been severely lacking. But now, with just a few things left to check off, I was fuelled by my desire and passion alone to finish, to see the goal that I had projected over three years ago, to finally experience what I had been putting off for so long.

I spent an entire week of purely grinding. The 228 recipes paled in comparison to arguably one of my worst experiences playing this game, the armour upgrades. You would think that traversing this world for 300+ hours would have enabled me to find all of the materials I would need. You couldn’t be more wrong. I was so far off my estimate, both in rupees and in materials, and the mountain just got 10x as harder to climb. Some people may have quit there and then, the official 100% category only counts a few of the armour upgrades, not every single one, but I was different. I was not going to let this feeling of despair rule me and instead make me try harder to get over this line that I could finally see ahead of me.

So there I was, farming for every material necessary for all of the upgrades. I was beating bosses again, farming enemies, ores, gems, everything. One in particular that was a ball ache to get where the infamous Lizalfos tails. If anyone has tried to 100% the game they would know the pain and suffering these Lizard bastards gave me. When killed these guys can give you a tail as loot, but it seems to be quite the rarity, and that is exemplified especially when it is the only thing you need from them. I spent entire evenings farming Ice, Fire, and Electric tails in what was a tiresome effort, but it eventually reaped its reward. Seeing the 4 stars on each armour set was arguably the thing I was most proud of, except there was one that I was saving till the last, in quite a poetic way.

The Champion’s Leathers is Link’s main outfit for this entire game. They are an upgrade both visually and physically for Link from the Champions Tunic he wore in BOTW. They are the clothes you see in all of the game’s promotional artwork, well, the ones that don’t show Link practically naked that is. I wanted to leave these till last for a good few reasons. Firstly, they were one of the first pieces of armour I had discovered in the game for start. One of the first things I did in this game after returning down to Hyrule was go to Hyrule Castle, and see what was left after the events of the Upheaval. I remember getting to the Sanctum and being able to explore it, as you were unable to in BOTW, was such a cool experience, and waiting there behind a puzzle was indeed Link’s shiny new outfit. How it got there after the events at the beginning of the game, Hylia knows. Especially after Zelda purposely left them there in a chest for him as explained in her diary in her secret underground base. The Castle is where I also found the Hylian Shield, which lasted all but the final few moments of my playthrough, thanks Ganondorf.

The other reason I left these Leathers till last was because they required parts from the Light Dragon to upgrade. Up until this point, I had barely interacted with the dragons at all, apart from ripping the Master Sword from Zelda’s head. One cool thing I discovered was that the other three dragons could go in and out of the Depths and farming their dragon parts for the most part was very enjoyable. But, I wanted my last memories experiencing this world as a whole to be one of calm, peace, ease, and who better to spend that time with than the Princess herself.

Just like the game, it brought me full circle to the beginning of the game. The dragon we see as Link skydives for the first time was my final destination. One of the earliest meaningful items I had found became the final armour piece I had to complete. I farmed her parts for my last hour of grinding, upgraded the armour at the Great Fairy Fountain and then…

Completion.

Well, not quite. I still had a few photos left to tackle that would only be available after the game is finished. Everything I could do before getting to Ganondorf…was done. Every Shrine. Every Lightroot. Every Skyview Tower. Every recipe. Every armour upgrade. Every Energy Cell upgrade. Every Schema Stone. Every Yiga Schematic. Every Side Quest. Every Side Adventure. Every available Main Quest. Every memory. I had reached the top of the summit, a summit that had taken me three years to overcome its plentiful number of obstacles. It was time to see what the ending had in store for me.

The day of Monday August 3^rd came. I knew this was the day I was going to beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and end this saga started with Breath of the Wild in 2020. Ending the game meant more to me than any other game, and I knew I wanted to treasure that feeling. Not many games I remember the exact moment I was when I beat them for the very first time. Xenoblade 3 comes to mind, when I beat it at 3am in the morning and had to be up at 6am for work the next day, but I think my experience with TOTK will stay with me forever.

I was home alone, able to be wrapped in my own thoughts whilst I descended down to the Depths underneath Hyrule Castle. I was well equipped and quite frankly not nervous or hesitant. I had spent over 800 hours with this iteration of Link and his abilities; there would have to be a monumental shift in difficulty to make me feel on edge in this final boss battle. The further I went, the more it crept up on me. That feeling, so close. This was it. Seeing the same paths we treaded at the very start of the game, bombing the now bombable wall to reveal the rest of the mural depicting Zelda’s role in the story. The whole game was a full circle and we never saw it, that’s almost why it felt poetic to be with Zelda in my final moments in this world beforehand…or so I thought.

Feelings of the person I was 3 years ago on the 12^th of May 2023, when the game came out and I experienced this game for the first time, all the memories I have made both in the game and outside in that time, came rushing in as I went further down. I had never spent this long playing a video game before, the more time I spent with it, the harder it felt to let go. I was going to finish the game not just for me, but also for the person I was three years ago, and also the person I was when I first discovered this land of Hyrule and fell in love with six years ago.

I came into it with no expectations or experience. I had not been spoiled one bit on the game’s conclusion. Of course, there were theories going on in my head of how the developers were planning to end this, as Zelda games usually do end on a bang. But, for the first time in my entire playthrough, those thoughts had gone. Any thoughts or speculation or anything was on my mind. I was letting myself enjoy the moment purely for what it’s worth, not worrying about anything, no other objective, no sidequests, nothing to collect. I was one with Link. There was only one task at hand which gave such a strange but satisfying feeling. It helped that I managed to put myself in the zone at the time, putting all of my focus into finishing the game and leaving everything else to the side for an hour or two. The most connected I felt to the game was at its conclusion, and that made the process so much more enjoyable.

One slight downside to having done everything there was in the game before the final battle, was that I didn’t struggle one bit. I had gloom resistance a plenty and an assortment of weapons and devices that made combat a breeze for the first part. It was great to see the Sages join you in the initial battle and it gave me Skyward Sword vibes, having something to build you up to the final battle. Once that was taken care of, only one single thing lay in between me and credits. Ganondorf.

What is there to say about the Demon King? Not only is the boss fight crazy, but the music with all the call-backs to prior games, the atmosphere, his taunts, everything made me so happy whilst playing. As a character, this version of Ganondorf doesn’t do much for me personally. Link interacts with him three times during the whole game, one of the times he’s not even technically there. I never felt personally connected to him like I did in games like Ocarina of Time or in the Wind Waker. That being said, it doesn’t make him any less powerful or make him have any less aura. The fight was everything I had wanted. I remember struggling with it, then learning of the attack patterns, adjusting my strategy, and beating him. Which is perfect for a Zelda boss, and something I rarely felt in any encounter in the game due to the difference in levels between me and the boss. It felt fresh, new, exciting, and mixed in with the incredible music, the second phase especially referencing the Calamity Ganon fight in BOTW, it took me back. It wasn’t quite a Colgera moment for me, but damn did it hit hard. It reminded me of the person I was when I first beat BOTW, we had both gone on similar journeys with different paths but had ended up in the same destination. Fighting the final boss with this epic music playing. The only difference was, I had three years of payback ready to give Ganondorf.

From the moment we learn of Zelda’s sacrifice, it was possible to assume Ganondorf could have done the same, and when I realised something was off after beating the second phase, you could see where the final showpiece was headed. You know those moments in games where you just can’t stop smiling and telling yourself, I love this franchise! That was me during the entire final fight. The spectacle was worth three years of waiting of grinding, of exploring this entire world head to toe, side to side, of all the setbacks and frustration, I was finally here. It felt like a momentous occasion, for all of the sacrifices along the way, both from myself and from Zelda to get to this point and having her join for the final battle was unbelievable.

It makes sense, she is a constant in final boss battles in 3D Zelda games, only Majora’s Mask and Skyward Sword she doesn’t appear in, even Breath of the Wild she is inside Dark Beast Ganon but having her come from the sky and help Link in her dragon form was beautiful. It’s made even better by the fact we know that she was sleeping and was unconscious when she was a dragon, yet some amount of consciousness was provided to aid Link, which I found so amazing. It almost comes back to one of the best lines in Zelda history, what Zelda says before the Dark Beast Ganon fight in BOTW. “Courage need not be remembered, for it is never forgotten”. In a similar vein, Zelda had this for her wisdom.

So much has happened in my life in the past three years. There’s been triumphs, tragedies, celebrations, feelings of loss, hope, despair. They all stayed with me and this playthrough had symbolised them into something meaningful. Everything was going through my head at that point, but I was focused on the task at hand. I was going to defeat the Demon Dragon and restore order to Hyrule. I had no distractions, just me, my controller and the Master Sword to do the job. After getting to the stone on top of the head, I slashed away at the health bar until it was gone and delivered the final blow.

That was it, I thought. I had finally beaten Tears of the Kingdom after a long three years. All I had to do was bask in the ending cutscenes and try my hardest not to cry. But I wasn’t done.

After Ganondorf is defeated and quite frankly drops a nuke on the land of Hyrule, we see Link aura farming on top of Zelda’s head before we are taken to a sort of spirit realm, where we are greeted by the souls of Rauru and Sonia, who with the help of Link’s hand, transform Zelda back into her Hylian form. Zelda was back, her music was swelling, I was a mess.

Remember how I said how much I enjoyed Zelda’s character in BOTW and how she became a relatable figure when it comes to failure and overcoming that through love, this is the same Zelda that had gone through so much worse in the sequel. Travelling alone in the skies for thousands upon thousands of years all for the goal of bathing the Master Sword in her sacred power. Her sacrifice wasn’t in vain, and now through the power of makeshift Mum and Dad, she was back to her old self.

There was just one problem though, we still had to catch her. The whole transition between cutscenes and then straight to gameplay, where we have to fall down to reach Zelda was the best moment in the entire game. It was worth waiting three years to finally see the game’s conclusion in this light. Having Link save her was so poetic as a call-back to the opening where his failed attempt led to all the events of the game transpiring. Once again, it was a full circle moment, and it was magical. The game began with Link failing to catch her and ended by giving me control and asking me to try again. Through the tears, Link grabbed Zelda’s hand and I had done it.

1180 days. 3 years and 3 months later, it was done.

The ending was one of those moments I will cherish forever. Seeing Link and Zelda finally reunited, with the rendition of Zelda’s Lullaby in the background was everything I needed. It wasn’t just an ending for this game however, it was an ending through all of the 3D Zelda games, that started with BOTW 6 years ago. It was emotional not just seeing Zelda finally awake and aware of the evil gone, especially when the music swells when she mentioned “A warm loving embrace”, that always gets me watching back. It was also emotional because of the journey, the three and the six year journeys respectively, that had led me down this path that I call life, led me to this exact moment where I sat, finishing and experiencing the end of the game in the way that I did. It was a perfect end to this whole saga.

The final cutscene was fantastic too. Seeing more of these characters that I had spent so long with was always a bonus, and it was a fitting end to the story of both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. More than anything though, it completed Zelda’s character development. After years of self-doubt, sacrifice and carrying the weight of Hyrule on her shoulders, or on her head, she had returned home surrounded by people willing to stand beside her. Then they all lived happily ever after, maybe. I returned back to the game to see my Star was on my save file, the 100% marker was on the map, and I headed to get my final few collectables that resulted in my 100% completion of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It was done.

Chapter Six: The Journey’s End

Some of life’s worst moments come in the aftermath of such a joyous occasion. The day after a great holiday, after the last day of school, college, perhaps a job you enjoyed. It’s a cliché thing to say, but when we look back at the best parts of our lives, we don’t realise how much we miss that and would go back to that moment in a heartbeat. So many times I look back at my life and think to myself, I wish I told myself to enjoy that moment. But these moments being so special and unique is what makes them stand out. They aren’t ordinary. They aren’t usual. They don’t become the norm for you. They are surreal because they don’t happen often and in some instances, they never happen again. Your school days are over, you will never have an 18^th birthday again, you may never graduate again, and so many more memories that are a one time experience.

The reason I say this is because the same is so true for pieces of media, pieces of entertainment. As a massive sports fan, there are certain moments that I remember so fondly because of the momentous of the occasion. Max Verstappen winning his 1^st World Championship in 2021 in the way that he did is something I wish I could experience again for the first time, Michael Smith's infamous 9-darter in the 2023 World Darts Championship final, moments in life that appear extraordinary that in the moment you don’t appreciate and cherish just how special you experiencing this truly is.

Films, TV shows, concerts, books, anything that does its job to entertain you especially for the first time will always be a special moment. I remember seeing Sonic 3 in the cinema for the very first time, sharing that experience with my best friend and so many passionate fans in the theatre, and being so overjoyed. Every day I wish I could go back to that moment and suck it up and transport it into a vacuum that I could relive over and over again. Video games are one and the same, and in fact, they are made even more special because of the efforts we go as players to achieve these experiences. Unlike a film, TV show, sport event, concert, all these experiences are in front of our eyes, played for us. We are a spectator, purely observing these events live, and the reactions we get can so easily be shared with those around us experiencing the same thing.

Video games are different. We as the player do the work. Of course, everything is scripted a certain way to get to the end, but we have to get there ourselves. It takes more willpower, more commitment, more dedication and drive to achieve things in video games rather than joy being handed out like a napkin at a dinner party. Some games are meant to be short bursts of fun, some are experiments that don’t last a long time but are enjoyable throughout, some are games that aren’t meant to end, that are meant to be played over and over again, some are showpieces for their respective genres that make you want to bask everything in in that moment. Each game experience is unique to each player, and that’s what makes the video game industry so unique. Having all these different games able to impact a player differently each time is a speciality only video games can create.

That’s what brings me back to the feelings I had when my experience with Tears of the Kingdom was all said and done. Even now, a few weeks later, wrapping up this entire script, it still begs belief that I have finished, that my first time experience has come and gone, and that I will never get to have that feeling again. Every time I pick this game up and play in the future, be it tomorrow, next month, 5 years down the line or even when my next generation comes along and plays it, I will never have that sense of wonder and discovery once again. That had always been chipping away at me every time I made a discovery or completed a quest. But it never became a big problem up until the time I put my controller down for the first time and truly reflected on my experience.

It took me a few days to really assess my thoughts on the game and reflect to myself on the three years that had come and gone. Of course, when I first finished the game, I was overwhelmed with emotions. Happy ones of course, that the game had ended so well and beautifully and of course sensations of feeling proud and joyous of the fact I had completed the journey I had set out for over three years ago. I remember rushing to YouTube to watch as many reactions to the ending as possible. To see people’s thoughts on the game there and then, to share that moment I had just experienced with people I barely know through a screen. To see that so many of these reactions were from three years ago really puts things into perspective. I was three years late to this; they weren’t three years early.

Could I have finished the game in a similar vein to most people and be able to share that moment with the community at a time the game had its strongest upsurge in publicity and discussions? Of course I could. I could have streamlined my experience and rushed for the goal-line, shrugging any spoiler warnings out my way as I did the bare minimum to see everything purely blind through my own eyes in a matter of weeks. I could have been there in the moment, witnessing people’s first time reactions live, sharing that and reminding myself of my own emotions during peak moments of the game, of which there are so many.

But that went against my ideals. I was not going to let spoiler culture and video game discourse dictate my journey with this game. I had already decided prior to the game my approach to this game, and the time spent with it was going to be decided based on other facts in my life and basing my playing time around that. As I said earlier in the piece, due to my completionist mentality, not only do I want to get the most out of everything, but I also don’t really care how long it takes me. When I first started this game, I knew there would eventually be a day I would finish, but the prospect of that being so far away purely based on my BOTW experience and also what the gaming outlets were saying at the time talking about the scope and scale of this game, I knew rushing this game would have been a bad idea.

The thought of playing it for 10 or so hours a day even during my days off would have felt overwhelming. I didn’t want to burn myself out. No longer was I confined indoors like my time with BOTW. Not only did I want to not feel that again, but I also just purely wanted to take my time with this world. From the very beginning of the game, I knew this would be something special. Rushing it rather than preserving it would have tainted my experience for the worse I feel. I also know that a lot of people who played it spent so many hours in the first few weeks of the game’s release and beat the game shortly after. I commend these people so much. Those that don’t live by my imposed guidelines, who can do as much or as little as possible with a game and be happy with their experience, as we all reach the same conclusion at the end. Even those who are paid to play these games, reviewers, streamers, whoever I have the utmost respect for because I don’t think I could do it. For me, games are more than just a one evening experience, something you can move on with the next day. The idea of buying a game and completing it in the same day feels completely alien to me. When I play a game, I am not looking to kill one night. If its something I have high hopes for and especially if it is something I have been waiting a while for, for me it simply can’t just be treated as a one and done thing.

I suppose one of the biggest reasons my playthrough differed between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom was purely because of the wait in between. Of course, I saw BOTW in 2017 along with the Switch and spent nearly 3 years wanting to try the game for myself, but it was never a major concern that I had to wait. I didn’t impose a wait, like I had to earn the right to get a Switch for myself, I just had no need for it at the time. When I did get it, I hadn’t felt like I had been waiting for three years for this exact moment, so jumping into BOTW at the time I did didn’t feel like an experience three years in the making. I didn’t rush through it per se, but I did spend a lot of time with it in a rather short period of time purely because of the restrictions we had all been put in. It gave me the impetus to propel my playthrough further than I have ever gone before to play so many hours in such a short time span, especially when those same hours were shared over a three and a bit year span with its sequel.

If TOTK was in BOTW’s place, as in that was the game we got in 2017 and the game I got for Christmas 2019, I am sure my playthrough would have been near enough the same. There was no previous expectations, or self-imposed guidelines or any restrictions, or any prior experiences that were running through my head when playing the original, that made it so fresh and unique every time I played. But, Tears of the Kingdom didn’t release like that, and in fact, took nearly 4 years to come out after its announcement. These games aren’t just special in the moment we play it, they are special in the build-up, the anticipation, the excitement, all of which had been brewing for four years, and for me personally after my BOTW experience, was three years in the making. So many times we would watch Nintendo Directs hungry for news on the sequel to BOTW, then we got a name, then we got THAT trailer, the excitement was overwhelming. Having three years of build-up isn’t just something you can let loose in within weeks and be gone with. If anything, I feel like I have won in that regard. Because if you think of it, we are three years closer to the next mainline 3D Zelda game now then we were when most people finished TOTK. I have not only been playing the latest game for three years, but now that I have finished, I don’t have to wait as long for my next experience. Who knows, it could come out next year, or the year after, or five years from now. But the fact is, I don’t regret being late to the game’s huge discourse and discussion or talking about all the big moments in the game when all eyes were on it. I had the weight of three years of waiting for this game that the only way I could repay it and fulfil that was to spend an equal amount of time experiencing it for myself.

Being honest, I did not think I would take three years to beat the game. I thought at best, maybe a year and I would be done. The way I was making progress in the early stages made me feel like that was possible. But eventually, even despite my slow progress with the game and only playing it in short bursts, life gets in the way sometimes. My journey was far from smooth. Just like in the land of Hyrule, there were so many highs and lows, so many peaks and troughs when it came to my playthrough. Times I was so motivated to keep playing and times where I got lost in the moment, checking my phone to see that so many hours had passed. But for every moment like that, there were times were picking up the controller felt like a chore, felt like something I wasn’t going to get repaid in. But all of those moments made it MY playthrough.

There could be other people who played the game day one and are only getting round to beating the game for the first time. I know of a few people who picked the game back up again through the Switch 2 version and finally beat it. There was no time limit to beating the game, only really when hardware malfunctions and your Switch stops working 300 years from now more than likely. But the point I am trying to say was that my experience not just with the game but everything else in my life during these three years has shaped and moulded into my unique experience with this game. I can attach certain key moments in the game to the different times in my life, even times I wouldn’t be playing the game, TOTK still remained a part of it for what it was. It was always there for me, telling me I could pick it up and play whenever I wanted to.

On the 4^th of August, for the first time, that feeling wasn’t there. The feeling of TOTK having my back, being a source of inspiration, knowing I could play it and get lost in the world for a few hours motivated me in the real world to get gruelling tasks done like university work or my part-time work. TOTK was there as a leeway, a gateway to pure enjoyment whatever situation I was in, however good or bad I was feeling, it helped me. It was like a friend or a companion I could always turn to for support, even if it never talked back. When something has been with you in your life for so long it can become bigger than what you had originally thought it would be. For me, Tears of the Kingdom isn’t just a video game to me. It became a core part of me that helped me through arguably some of the greatest challenges of my life so far, and so that’s why I finally have the answer to the question at the top of this page.

I wasn’t taking three years to finish Tears of the Kingdom. For a long time, I was finding reasons not to.

But why, what was the game doing to me that made it specifically capable of sustaining that for three years?

It let me. It told me to do what I want, go where you please, challenge anything and everything. But I couldn’t just live like that. I don’t like not being told what to do. I like rules and regulations, guidelines to making following things easier. If everything in life worked like Tears of the Kingdom, nothing would get done. I like rota’s, schedules, time spans, things that make me stick to certain things at certain times. So that’s what I did. I gave myself those rules, guidelines to stick to, to make sure I wasn’t going too far off the beaten track, despite how tempting it is to do in this game.

The beauty of both BOTW and TOTK is one that I don’t think would work for me normally. Theoretically, if someone in real life told me that I had four main things to do, but I could do them however, whenever, in whatever way I wanted to do so, I don’t know if I could do it. If they told me how they wanted me to do it, then sure, no problem. But allowing that sort of freedom is something I am not used to, nor do I see as a good thing. I suppose as someone so used to that nature, from what my parents have brought me up as, going through school being taught for so many years of your life of things that are true and fact, you never bothered to question. When it comes to creativity, of course I view myself as a creative person. I love coming up with ideas for things, for projects, for content, for fun things to do with friends for example. But being truthfully honest, if someone told me everything instead, I wouldn’t be too impartial to that. If every time me and my friends organised to meet up, most of the time I would let them do the sorting and I’ll just listen and go with the flow.

The same is true when it comes to video games. I have always preferred less choices than more, probably because its easier to make the most of the smaller number of things you have. Take the latest Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom. In that game, to compensate for Zelda being the main playable character, you use Echoes as a way to combat rather than the conventional sword and shield Link wields. However, there is way too many echoes in that game. I am all for experimentation, but I saw myself using four or five echoes ALL the time and probably didn’t touch half of them at all apart from to unlock them all. When it comes to BOTW and TOTK, nothing has a direct solution. If you think of anything that can be done in the games, from shrines, Koroks, even things like traversal or beating enemies, there is no true way of doing things. Which is the games biggest strengths yet also its biggest weakness for me personally. I still yearn for the times when you had to solve a puzzle a certain way in the more traditional Zelda games, especially in dungeons. I’ve already made it clear my distaste to these types of dungeons, how a lack of structure goes against even the first game’s ideals, despite how open in nature that was. I’m not saying I want telling what to do, because the beauty about some of Zelda’s best puzzles has been finding out for yourself, but there has to be a better mix of freedom and structure for future titles.

Ironically, my favourite part of the game was when there was only one true method to succeed: The final boss battle against the Demon Dragon. You don’t have to use the Master Sword, but it is implied that you should. Restricting that freedom and only using in essence the four most critical elements of the series’ identity: Link, Zelda, Ganondorf and the Master Sword all at one with each other. It will forever be my favourite final boss in maybe all of gaming purely from a spectacle stand piece, which is a massive feat considering I thought Super Mario Galaxy’s one couldn’t be topped. I also find it really funny and quite coincidental that Zeltik, arguably the biggest Zelda YouTuber, made a video about the final boss right after I had finished the game for the first time, funny how things work out eh?

The point I am trying to make is that without the structure I had imposed on myself, this game would A) not have taken me three years to complete and B) not warranted a 30,000 word article on it either. I used the game’s freedom and imposed as much of a structure I could as possible. Not a physical structure on the world itself, not giving Link structure. It was a metaphorical structure for me as the player only, one that only I had to follow. Exploring each region thoroughly before moving on to the next one, collecting everything I could see, not using official guides, just using my Hero’s Path to judge what I deemed enough exploration. I followed that structure all the way till it stopped helping me and started preventing me from finishing. That’s when Zelda Notes took the mantle of my structure to help me home.

I don’t think I could have a similar experience with any game particularly ever. Maybe not even the next Zelda game. This experience was totally unique to anything I had ever played in my life. Even compared to some massive video games I have played in the past, I didn’t use this method because there was less to explore, less to seek out. But also, there was less desire to explore, less sense of wonder from my standpoint to. The relationship I had forged with this game was totally my doing, and I am proud I kept with it till the end. It makes this game so much more personal to me as it holds this meaning of structure that makes me function so well myself, TOTK serves as a reminder that my ideals can work when imposed on daunting tasks that have a lot of uncertainty.

Of course, that isn’t to say the playthrough was seamless throughout, and my structure certainly did hamper my experience with the game at points. Again, grabbing the Master Sword much earlier than I should have remains my one and only major regret in this game, and it was only because of my ruleset that I imposed that I thought it would be a viable thing to do. It will certainly be something I avoid doing in repeat playthroughs that is for sure. There were also plenty of times motivation levels for the game dropped, purely because the path I had set myself on wasn’t particularly exciting or unique, and that’s to be expected. There just simply is no way the developers could stack every single bit of this world head to toe with goodies and collectables and things to do. But by the nature of my structure, if it was explorable, I explored it.

I think the best picture that summarises my playthrough is my hero’s path journey. If you needed any pure evidence of my commitment and dedication to this land of Hyrule, here it is. It perfectly describes my journey so perfectly, and it also serves as a mini-time capsule, as even though it doesn’t pinpoint where you were at a certain date, it in itself is a three-year time-lapse from the time I spent on the Great Sky Island all the way to my final altercation with The Demon King. It looks ridiculous. There are dead ends, endless circles, backtracking, areas I didn’t touch for YEARS. Places I always came back to like Lookout Landing or Lurelin Village if I wanted a free place to stay the night. It covered the entire map then and again, there isn’t a dot visible that I hadn’t explored, and seeing it as a clear picture is worth so much. I’m not sure this journey would have taken as long as it did have it not been for Hero’s Path. The fact I can visibly see where I had gone was a major factor to approaching the game how I did. It allowed me to see where I had or hadn’t gone, and even if there was still a lot I missed on my first-time travelling, I tried my damn hardest and doesn’t Hero’s Path know it.

Hero’s Path tells more than just a story, however. It tells me that progress doesn’t have to look like a straight line to still be progress. That’s not how it works. No playthrough will be a straight line from one place to the next, all the way up until the end. That’s not how the game wants you to play. That’s something useful for our own lives as well. Progress isn’t something we keep doing over and over again. We don’t progress without failure. We don’t collect something every day. We don’t win every day. It’s just not possible. I think my playthrough says a lot about the life I have led in the last three years. I have been on my own Hero’s Path for 24 years now, and especially in the last three years, I too have come to dead ends, huge detours, side-tracks. There’s been times I have stopped, times I have gone backwards. Not every step is a step forward in my life. But it’s still my journey. Every twist, every pause, every mistake, every success, is all a part of my own path.

There’s a lot I can take from my playthrough with TOTK, about how giving myself a structure on a world without much of it imposed, as that is where I currently stand in my life. I have just completed my Master’s degree at university, after graduating my undergraduate degree last year. That is it, all my years of academia, gone. For the last 20 years of my life, I was living under a ruleset applied all the way back in my first year of school. Learning, being taught, has been part of my DNA since I can barely remember. Every September I would always have something to go back to. This September, I won’t have that, and I am really struggling with that notion at the moment. Not because I want to go back to university, firstly I can’t afford it, nor do I fancy it purely because of how exhausting this last year has been for me overall. I find myself looking back at my playthrough and as much and as realistically as I can, comparing the tasks in Hyrule to the tasks in my life. Finding a job in my industry is my Destroy Ganondorf Questline at the moment. It won’t be easy; I’m only currently at three hearts.

The problem for me at the moment is that I have no clear direction that I want to go in. My hero’s path has nowhere needed to be explored, because the next part of my life hasn’t been unlocked yet, no matter how hard I am trying at the moment. It hurts, and it has been hurting for a while, and this is why I have distracted myself by writing this piece. I couldn’t have just left this game like any other, it has had the biggest meaning and impact on my life compared to any other video game I have played so far. When I finished the game, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Just because it had nothing left to give to me didn’t mean that I couldn’t give it anything. I felt like I had to repay it in this form you are reading now, gathering all my thoughts, all my memories, all my emotions over the course of three years.

Writing this hasn’t just been revisiting the last three years I had spent in Hyrule, it had been a revisit of my life as a whole. So much has happened in that time that I could barely comprehend, yet TOTK has always been that constant juggernaut in my mind, always with me. Now as I reach a crossroads in my life, as I end a chapter, I will end up starting another, leaving the previous one behind, with TOTK included. That doesn’t mean I can’t take what I have learned in these three years with me into the next stage of my life, I will certainly plan on doing so.

I have certainly found it difficult mentally for myself in the past few months. I don’t deal well with uncertainty, especially if it personal for my development. I hate my current situation, with no certainty for a job or progress in the person I want or aspire to be. It hurts every day waking up not making any suitable progress, and it may be why TOTK came back into my life the way it did. It reminded me that progress not only takes time, but it will come. Progress can be painfully slow, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I am not someone to be happy or content with how I am currently living, and I can thank TOTK for that mentality. Despite how difficult a task can seem, you don’t have to do it seamlessly to progress. Just as long as you do it your way.

When the next 3D Zelda comes out, who knows what situation my life will be in. No the Ocarina of Time remake doesn’t count! If you compare my journey as I conclude writing this on the 21^st of August 2026, to the person who experienced the world of BOTW for the first time in January 2020, so much has changed, despite the fact I hate change. But one thing is for certain, I have progressed since then, in so many ways, and certainly not in the conventional way. But that’s just how I like it. It’s what makes me, me, and its what has made my playthrough so unique and special, even if I’m three years late to the party, and all the good snacks are gone, and in fact, all of the guests are gone.

It sounds asinine that Tears of the Kingdom still isn’t my favourite video game of all time, could I talk this much about Super Mario Galaxy? All that matters is that this game means so much more to me than the average player, thanks to its characters, its storytelling, its world, and its ability to make my adventure across the sky, the surface and the depths as personal to me as possible. Thinking about this game brings joy to me, brings a smile to my face, even if there is a slight tint of sadness knowing I will never be able to experience this for the first time again. But these experiences will never be forgotten, because of the experience I had crafted myself, and that’s the underlying message this piece wanted to share. A game is as special as you want to make it, and that is why I will always hold this game near and dear to my heart. The Hero’s Path for Tears of the Kingdom might have finished, but mine has only properly just started.

Thanks for reading.