Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Review-in-progress Part 4: Beautiful Tears

In part 1 and 2 of our review-in-progress, we talked about Tears of the Kingdom’s unique new gameplay. In part 3, we talked about the game’s story. For our final review-in-progress, we’ll talk about the game’s graphics. Does this game look better than Breath of the Wild? How does it perform on the Switch? Let’s get into it.

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom looks a lot like Breath of the Wild. At first glance, you may not even think the graphics have changed at all. You would be so very wrong.

Tears of the Kingdom is a far more detailed game than Breath of the Wild. On the surface, basic level, the game is very much like Breath of the Wild. But as you look as the NPCs, all of the caves, the sky, the surface, basically everything you’ll catch details you didn’t see on the previous game. Breath of the Wild was a game split between two systems: the Switch and the Wii U. This game is absolutely a Nintendo Switch game. And it may be one of the best looking games on the Switch.

There are so many fantastic enemies, a bigger variety than the previous game, and tons of things to see and do. The world of Tears is far bigger and deeper than anything we saw in Breath of the Wild. Which is a crazy thing to say since that Zelda game was pretty big. Tears of the Kingdom is a beautiful game and nearly perfect.

Tears of the Kingdom is one of the best-looking games that you’ll see on the Switch. It does have some pop-in when Link is falling toward the ground and we saw it freeze briefly once, but otherwise, this game runs very smooth. We’ve seen games on other systems run a lot worse that supposedly had better framerates. Nintendo always does a great job with their games. The game might be at a lower frame rate but they run smoothly most of the time and have very few flaws.

Most impressive though? The game transitions from the sky to the ground and to the underground with no load times at all. There are load times when you fast travel but they are pretty fast. Tears of the Kingdom is just a gorgeous game.

If you loved Breath of the Wild, you’ll adore this game. If you didn’t like Breath of the Wild, give Tears of the Kingdom a chance anymore. Its full of surprises!

Stay tuned because tomorrow we’ll have our full review of Tears of the Kingdom!

Thank you to Nintendo Canada for providing a review code for this game. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out now for the Nintendo Switch.