Brilliant adventure encourages creativity and imagination.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 10+?
Any Positive Content?
Violence & Scariness
some
Combat is presented from a third-person perspective and involves standard fantasy elements such as swords, shields, axes, bows and arrows, explosives, and elemental magic. Link fights monsters similar to goblins, ogres, and fairies. They flash with energy when struck and disappear when dispatched. No blood or gore, though the animals Link hunts for food turn into raw, red steaks.
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Themes of friendship, duty, and love run through a simple fantasy story about heroes taking on an ancient evil. Play encourages creativity, imagination, and trusting intuition and using critical thinking to persevere.
Positive Role Models
some
Link is a classic fantasy hero, compassionate, loyally helping friends, and coming to the aid of strangers as he works to protect the land from monstrous villains. He's a formidable fighter but often chooses other methods of getting around obstacles, showing self-control by using his wits to come up with novel solutions to puzzles and challenges. He embodies perseverance and courage.
Diverse Representations
some
None of the characters are human, but humanoids are presented with skin tones ranging from light to dark, and female characters are depicted in a variety of roles, from fighters and leaders to engineers and scientists.
There's a lot to learn, but the game is mostly intuitive. In-game tutorials walk players through each new mechanic as it's introduced. Puzzles and combat can be challenging, but there's rarely one "right" way to do anything, so players can find success in unexpected ways. Optional motion controls for aiming may assist players with disabilities.
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an action adventure game for Switch. A direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, this game has content that's very similar. Players control the noble hero Link, a duty-bound and compassionate adventurer always willing to help those in need while working to rid the world of an ancient evil. He fights using swords, bows and arrows, and elemental magic to eliminate traditional fantasy monsters and demons, though without any blood or gore (enemies flash with light when struck and disappear once defeated). The bulk of players' time is spent exploring, solving puzzles, and intuitively building things -- such as bridges, boats, winged ships, and carts -- using a special telekinetic ability. This kind of play encourages kids to think outside the box, using their imaginations to create novel solutions. There's rarely a "right" way to accomplish a goal, but rather countless methods of varying complexity and creativity. While there are no humans in the game, humanoid characters are presented with a variety of skin tones, from light to dark, and female characters fill nonstereotypical roles ranging from leaders to scientists. Link presents a strong positive role model of courage, perseverance, and self-control, as he is proven to be a strong fighter but often chooses to resolve challenges in more creative ways.
This Zelda game is a masterpiece, They added even more creativity than BOTW It's amazing! and haters keep hating. You're just mad you cant build easily.
An enormous game with enormously realized potential!
This is a fantastic game with loads to do. For those coming from Breath of the Wild, players might note that many resources that were abundant in the previous game are more limited in this one. This is by design. While there are many, many ways to "cheese" challenges, the resources to do so are limited, thereby encouraging players to think of creative solutions with the limited tools they have. And you frequently can run out of resources that you want to use through overuse. You can attach most things from your inventory to weapons, shields and arrows, increasing their durability and/or changing their effects. Money is scarce, and I have not seen ice arrows, fire arrows, etc. sold anywhere over the 12 or so hours I've spent in the game. If you want to thrive in the game, you will need to manage your inventory well and keep certain things you need on hand in order to make elemental arrows and other things you might need on the fly.
While the overall land is the same as the one found in Breath of the Wild, there are many platforms in the sky and a dark underbelly to explore. Reaching a far-off high platform can be challenging, and often requires building things using the new Ultrahand ability in order to reach them. Since so much of the game is in the sky, stamina is very important, as it will allow you to glide farther and climb higher. Hearts become more important as you explore the underground.
The underground is a tainted landscape filled with "Blight". If you touch that stuff, then your maximum health decreases until you reach a large light source or return to the surface. In addition, the place is enormously dark. There are abundant plants called "Brightblooms" that you can collect and can light up your way, but it can be terrifying to walk in the dark to get surprised by an enemy. The enemies do glow somewhat, but with much of the underground being dark until you light it up, it likely will be an area most players wait to explore heavily until the late game.
If you have the courage to brave the underground, you'll be rewarded with items and things that can be enormously useful, especially Zonaite, a resource that can be inserted into "gacha" machines to get gadgets for your builds. The more you insert at a time, the more you get at once. These machines are spread across the land, and each machine has a different pool of items that are usually well-suited to the region or area. By stockpiling lots of these items, you can make builds to fulfill challenges and reach places in creative ways. Make sure to keep enough on hand so when you encounter a new machine, you can use it and get new items for your builds.
The shrines, however, have the restriction that you cannot use these items in your inventory. This makes sense, since the shrines are designed to help you develop skills and enrich your creativity in specific ways. From what I've heard, there are even more in this game than in Breath of the Wild! The game is certainly not lacking in content.
Teachers also can use this game as a teaching tool. Since the game encourages building and creativity, it can engage the brain in powerful ways. Physics especially comes to mind as a subject with strong correlation, since much of the game revolves around making builds in order to help people, reach new places and accomplish tasks.
What’s It About?
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM picks up after the events of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with Link and Princess Zelda exploring the underground ruins of a long-ago civilization. They accidentally awaken an ancient evil locked away by the original rulers of the Kingdom of Hyrule, unleashing a devestating event that reshapes the land, throwing floating islands of rock high into the sky and revealing access to an underground cave system filled with a dark magic called Gloom. Zelda disappears, and Link loses all of his hearts, stamina, and abilities as he sets out on a quest to defeat the newly unleashed menace, exploring the new landscape and meeting friends and allies old and new. As with the previous game, players are presented a free-to-roam sandbox world filled with puzzles, obstacles, and fantastical enemies. Link is given several new abilities to help him along the way, including the power to fuse items together to create an almost limitless variety of weapons, as well as the telekinetic ability to move and attach loose objects to create bridges and stairs, carts and ships, and almost anything else players can imagine. He can also reverse the flow of time for specific objects and ascend through solid materials, both of which come in handy while working through the game's 100-plus puzzle-filled shrines. Players looking to wring every last bit of fun out of this huge game can expect to invest somewhere between 100 and 200 hours.
Nintendo doesn't often give players direct sequels to Zelda games, but when it does, you can expect something special. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom builds on everything players loved about Breath of the Wild by tweaking and augmenting play mechanics in meaningful ways. For example, the physics in the original game were brilliant, allowing players to use their intuition to do things like roll rocks down hills, use the buoyancy of water to make less dense objects spring up from the surface, and cause fire to spread through grassy fields and forests. All of that still applies, but with the new building and fuse systems, players can now apply these same concepts to the weapons, vehicles, and objects they create. What happens if you add wheels to a plank? A fan to the back of a raft? A rocket to a set of wings? A sword to a shield? The possibilities are almost endless, and a huge part of the fun is experimenting to see how you can use this freedom to overcome obstacles. There's rarely a single right solution to any problem.
The world of Hyrule, meanwhile, is now somehow even bigger and more fascinating to explore. The addition of floating islands and subterranean caves creates a three-tiered map with an astounding amount of verticality, challenging players to think about how best to navigate this capacious landscape. It's a land teeming with secrets, from strange rock formations and geoglyphs (enormous drawings carved into the earth) to cave systems players can explore Minecraft-style by hammering through walls of rock to find precious ores. It feels like nearly every inch of this beautiful, fantastical land has something waiting for curious players to discover. The compelling characters and memorable stories scattered throughout this picturesque kingdom are just the sugar on top. Such a thoughtfully designed world and the boundless creativity it offers players make The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a worthy successor to one of the best games ever made.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about violence in the media. Combat in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom isn't graphic, but it can still be intense and dramatic, especially during some boss fights. Is blood and gore the only way in which violence can have an impact on players?
Talk about emergent play. Many games force players toward a single "right" solution to problems, but this game often allows players to find their own answers. Do you feel a greater level of satisfaction when you come up with a way to do something that others may not have thought about?
Link often shows strong characteristics of perseverance, courage and compassion. Why are these important character strengths? How can you strengthen these traits within yourself when playing games like this one?
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by
suggesting a diversity update.
Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
By Chad Sapieha
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based on child development research. How do we rate?
