Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is such a fantastic sequel to Breath of the Wild and adds so much to the core systems of the game that people are making the comparison of BotW being the ‘beta version’ and Tears of the Kingdom being the ‘full release’.
All that said, it’s not a ‘perfect’ game by any means. There are a lot of little changes Nintendo could make to the systems in the game or mechanics as a whole that would vastly improve players’ experiences. Let’s go over the most pressing Quality-of-Life (QoL) changes that this game could sorely use.
7 Sage Summon Abilities Are Awkward To Use
Starting with some spoilers right off the bat, as Link investigates the four Regional Phenomena across Hyrule, he unlocks ‘abilities’ in a comparable way to the Champion abilities in the previous game, just in the form of actual summons that use the powers.
But, the way that players actually ‘use’ these abilities once they’re active is incredibly unintuitive. Not only does it require Link to turn his focus away from an opponent to go interact with the summon and trigger the ability, but more often than not he basically has to ‘chase’ the summon down to do so as their auto-pathing AI can be a bit wonky. It almost feels like an involuntary ‘challenge’ that Nintendo is forcing on their player base in a way.
Thankfully, it’s a simple fix, as many fans have suggested, all Nintendo had to do is turn the Sage Abilities into a power Link can have active on the power wheel (remove the ‘Map’ ability slice and replace it with ‘Sage Abilities’). Once the Sage Abilities would hypothetically be activated, each of the four of them would be set to a different direction on the D-Pad, and would automatically jump to Link if he pressed the associated input.
6 More Filters In General Or Just A ‘Favorites’ Option
The sheer amount of potential combinations for different weapons, armor sets, materials, and so on in Tears of the Kingdom is almost incomprehensible. This is a game built for people to express their creativity, and no one’s arguing against that point when people are surfing on frozen meat and launching Bokoblins off cliffs with a Mushroom Spear.
But, there are so many Materials in the game that it can be awkward to scroll to the one Link actually wants to strap onto an arrow (or even throw by hand) in the middle of combat. Granted, time is paused while players are scrolling through this absurdly long list of Materials, but that doesn’t mean that’s acceptible. There are already 3 default filters to make this process a bit easier where players can sort by Type, Fuse Attack Power, and Most Used which do a pretty good job. But, if players could also just set certain Materials or Armor Pieces as ‘favorites’ that are always at the far left-hand side of the list, or pop to the far left when the ‘Favorites’ Filter is activated, it would things a whole lot easier.
5 Slight Item Rotation Adjustment
Let’s be honest, the way that rotating items with Ultrahand currently works in Tears of the Kingdom is ‘fine’ but that’s it. It’s not amazing and it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s not bad by any means. Still, if players could simply turn on an option for the gyro to control the rotation of their items alongside the ‘snap-rotations’ players can do by default, it would building things easier overall and it would especially make building things in tense situations against Tears of the Kingdom’s more ‘irritating’ enemies a lot more viable.
Granted, most TotK players also aren’t aware that they can just use ZL to ‘flatten’ an object as well, which also helps a lot.
4 Set Materials To Auto Attach To Arrows
Again, most of these suggestions are incredibly small changes but that’s sort of the definition of QoL changes as they’re small adjustments that end up making a pretty large impact over the course of someone’s playthrough. And, another QoL change that would go a long way is adding some button prompt or toggle option to have Link automatically attach the specified Material (usually explosive in nature) to each arrow as he draws the bow instead of manually having to do it each time.
For example, if players want to fire Brightbloom Seed Arrows in the Depths (though it’s recommended to throw them by hand instead) it’s a bit tedious to have to bring up the Material Menu each time they pull the string back. Instead, just give players an Enable/Disable option in the Material popup menu that enables the game to automatically keep attaching the last-used Material to each Arrow until it’s turned off or Link runs out of the selected Material. It’s so much easier to turn off an option than it is to live without the option altogether.
3 Adding Hyrule Compendium Images To The Camera Album
Most people playing Tears of the Kingdom probably have some story by now about some amazing picture they got of some monster just before it laid them out. Being a photographer in Hyrule is a ton of fun given all the small details Nintendo put into their world and creatures. Plus, it actually serves a mechanical purpose in-game in general and a bonus mechanical purpose at a certain progress point in Tarrey Town. Enemies added to the Hyrule Compendium will have entries providing valuable information about them such as where they’re located and what that drop. Not only that, but players also use these Compendium images to set their Sensor+ targets, making it so much easier to hunt down Treasure Chests or Bubbulfrogs to get those absurd-looking Monster Masks.
But, if taking these images was part of the game’s core design loop, then they should’ve realized how often players would unintentionally fill their albums up with Compendium pictures. There are only 64 slots in the Album, and players likely have a lot of those slots filled with pictures they want to keep. So making players constantly trim their Albums simply because they’re adding to their Compendium is just silly. Just switch the order of the pop-ups when a picture of a Compendium item/creature is taken. Ask the player if they want to add it to the Compendium and then ask them if they want to save or delete the picture. Additionally, allow players to re-access the image used in the Compendium instead of resizing it to a 1:1 Aspect Ratio after it’s been added.
2 General Autobuild Additions & Fixes
Autobuild in TotK is an aspect of the game that many people will be seeing posts about on Reddits, Youtube, and other forms of social media for the foreseeable future. Players will be posting their wacky builds using Cooking Pots or whatever else for at least the next year or so, and this was obviously Nintendo’s intention when they came up with this game’s construction system.
But again, this system was obviously designed this way, so it’s frustrating that there are only 8 Favorites Slots in total and that the customization and naming of these Favorites are basically non-existent. The renaming and editing aspects are very hyper-specific changes but only giving Link 8 Favorite Slots for the entirety of the game is honestly offensive.
1 Break Down & Combine Zonaite Types
Currently, in Tears of the Kingdom, there are two types of Zonaite for players to gather, Large Zonaite and regular Zonaite (just called Zonaite in-game). Some side quests or Chests specifically have Large Zonaite in them but for the most part players will just gather a mixed bag of both regular and Large Zonaite as they’re exploring the Depths and breaking Zonaite Deposits.
But, these two different Zonaite sizes are used to purchase different things at the Forge Constructs found across the Abandoned Mines in the Depths. Large Zonaite is used for Large Crystalized Charges while regular is used to purchase standard Crystalized Charges. So, it would make purchasing a specific amount of Crystals a whole lot easier if players could just ‘break’ Large Zonaite down into regular Zonaite or hand a certain amount to the Construct to ‘combine’ into a Large Zonaite.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on the Nintendo Switch.
#Zelda #Tears #Kingdom
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