Hi, welcome to DS’ Tears Of The Kingdom group therapy session. This is a safe space, so please feel free to share. Now, the fact that you’re reading this article can mean only two things: a) you’re here to empathetically relate to me and my petty tribulations, or b) You're here to laugh at the titular idiot. I’m cool either way. Know why? Because I’m secure enough to admit the following: Tears Of The Kingdom does, in fact, make me feel like an idiot—but only at times.
Much like with its predecessor, in Tears of the Kingdom you have to trudge through tens of hundreds of shrines populating the Great Sky Island and Hyrule. That’s not where my beef lies. I enjoy a good shrine grind just as much as the next man, but it’s almost like the rocket scientists at Nintendo were hip to my Achilles’ Heels when they designed the game: time and logic.
Lao Tzu once quipped, “To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is to say, ‘I don’t want to.” Sure, Lao. But here’s the thing: as an adult with a bundle of responsibilities, did you ever spend more than a few hours trying to beat a particularly difficult level on a video game? Didn’t think so. I’ve been playing games my entire life, but after procreation, the luxury of collapsing on a couch, picking up a controller and losing all track of time and fatherly/husbandly duties diminishes pretty quickly.
Case in point: those damn ubiquitous shrines. To be fair, they’re not all bad (in fact, some of us love 'em). They actually serve as clever little transport hubs that move you around Hyrule faster than a trusty tame horse. And, in their favor, a good chunk of them are even self-explanatory. The first four shrines on the Great Sky Island made me feel like some kind of Physics teacher. I prided myself (maybe even gave myself a disgusting pat on the back) when I figured out how to use my newly acquired abilities. So, the first hour or so of TotK is sort of a beginner's course, if you will. A chance to find your footing in terms of fighting, cooking, scavenging and surviving. I loved it. Fairly straightforward, just like I like my games and drinks.
What's more, skills like Ultrahand help you merge objects, Ascend allows you to teleport through overhead surfaces, while Fuse helps you...well, you get it. I had a lot of good, clean, easy fun with them and soon felt as if I could easily pull off a TED Talk on their uses. "Why, it's only natural that you'd choose to use the Ascend skill here," I explained to my non-existent audience. But after you unlock the Temple of Time, I realized that the last few hours truly were just a primer. An appetizer. A mere taste of the difficulties that were to come.
Elated from my previous encounters with problem-solving skills, I landed in the Kingdom of Hyrule, completely ignored Hyrule Castle (which, apparently you should definitely go straight towards), and began blazing my own ill-advised trail. In fact, this faux-pas was more than likely the catalyst that sent me spiraling into a world of angst. You encounter a few shrines posted off the main road sitting as ripe as low-hanging fruit, and just like a Venus Fly Trap I totally succumbed.
Let’s take Shrine M, for example (this is to protect both you and me). Resting in plain site atop a tall cliff, I was sure it would be a pushover. However, once I scaled the mountain at risk of life and limb and got inside, it was a nightmare. No clear instructions, just a massive stone ball, a few posts and a board. My heart sank as I realized that either a) I didn’t have the goods to solve this puzzle, and b) even if I did, what the hell was I supposed to do?
I checked my watch, it’d already been 30 minutes. How? Soon, I’d be discovered by the IRLs residing in my home, and my activities questioned. Cold sweat leaked down my back as I acknowledged that this shrine was a dud, at least for now.
Understand, I’m not opposed to puzzles at all, but TotK challenges are more like those brain-teasers that are supposed to make you smarter. As in “How can 8 + 8 = 4?” (DM me when you nail it). I understand the old 'teach a man to fish' adage and all that, but I don’t have the time to learn fishing. There’s a massive 50-80 hour game to beat here and time is a commodity. Strangely enough, even with Link’s absolute independence and the possibility to pretty much do/craft anything your heart desires, all is rendered moot in the shrines. You have to play by its rules, or else suffer a massive loss of time.
I’m happy to report, however, that all is not lost. The game is forgiving enough to allow me a second chance to redeem myself. Now, thanks to the help from DS’ Joshua Leeds and Emma Ward, light is beginning to coalesce at the end of the tunnel. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this painfully humbling experience, it’s that only an idiot believes that a sequel to a best-selling game can be bested so easily.