In 2017, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which reinvented Zelda as a completely open-world adventure. Breath of the Wild was so successful that Nintendo decided to release a direct follow-up, something that doesn’t happen often with the Zelda series. In 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released for the Nintendo Switch. It took its predecessor’s mechanics and expanded them greatly while adding new mechanics involving customizable weapons and contraptions to test players’ creativity.

Tears of the Kingdom was spectacular. I have played few games that felt as free and open, and while it used the same world as its predecessor, that world was expanded so much that I had no problem exploring it all over again. However, Tears of the Kingdom had some notable flaws, the worst of which being its awful performance. The game aimed for 30 FPS, but the game constantly dipped far below that.

The abysmal performance, however, made Tears of the Kingdom a perfect candidate for Nintendo’s series of enhanced Switch games for the Switch 2. These aptly named Nintendo Switch 2 Editions promise improvements to the visuals; loading times; and, most importantly, performance. These enhanced games also promise new features as well. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition can be purchased as a standalone game for $79.99 (the original version cost $69.99, which was already more than your average Nintendo game), or you can pay $9.99 to purchase an Upgrade Pack (which unlocks the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition as DLC) if you already own the original. Finally, if you have a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription, you can make use of the Upgrade Pack for no extra charge if you own the original. This review will mainly discuss the improvements brought by the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, but you can read my original review of Tears of the Kingdom here.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom starts off several years after the events of the last game. Link and Zelda are investigating the caves beneath Hyrule Castle, searching for the source of a mysterious substance dubbed Gloom. They soon find the source—the Demon King, Ganondorf. After a brief battle, Link’s legendary Master Sword shatters, and he loses his right arm to Ganondorf’s corruption. Zelda seemingly disappears, as well. Immediately after, Link wakes up to find himself on one of many islands that now dot the sky, along with a new magical arm, gifted by an ancient race called the Zonai, in place of his old one. As you take control of Link, it is up to you to find Zelda and Ganondorf.

Despite its more linear and plot-driven beginning, Tears of the Kingdom is nearly as open-ended as its predecessor. You can go anywhere you want as you search every last corner of Hyrule. You’ll find yourself scaling mountains, fighting monsters on horseback, investigating ancient ruins, and solving puzzles within Shrines of Light. You’ll be rewarded for your exploration with upgrades to your health and stamina, chests that contain useful weapons, and many other kinds of items.

Since Tears of the Kingdom uses the same overall map as Breath of the Wild, it may not feel as magical as exploring it the first time. However, Hyrule has gone through many changes to keep it fresh. There are long, winding caves scattered just about everywhere. As mentioned earlier, there are also plenty of sky islands to explore. Many of them are quite similar to one another, which is unfortunate, but they do incorporate enjoyable puzzles and a peaceful atmosphere. Finally, there are chasms everywhere, which you can jump down to enter an eerie subterranean layer known as the Depths.

Just like Breath of the Wild, you’ll also always be on the lookout for disposable weapons. Weapons still don’t last long before they break, but Tears of the Kingdom introduces a new mechanic to compensate for weapon durability. Using Link’s new magical arm, you can attach anything to your weapon, whether it be a rock you found, a horn you obtained from a monster, or even another weapon! Objects you attach can make your weapon stronger or give it elemental properties. Instead of needing to have a specific weapon on you for specific situations, you can just take an item from your inventory and apply it to any weapon you find.

This definitely softens the frustration of breakable weapons, but later on in my journey, I still found myself annoyed whenever weapons augmented with especially rare materials broke. There is an unconventional method of repairing weapons, at least, in which you can feed weapons to certain enemies to restore their durability, but this trick requires traveling to a specific region of Hyrule, making it quite inconvenient.

The other main innovation with Tears of the Kingdom is the ability to take any objects you find and combine them. You can take slabs of stone and wood logs, among many other objects, and magically attach them. There are also many magical objects, known as Zonai Devices, which include wheels, cannons, and flame throwers. In just a few minutes, you can turn some wheels and a wooden plank into a makeshift car. You can take some fans to make a powered raft. You can even attach rockets to a box to send it flying. You can also save blueprints of previous creations to recreate them. This even lets you create contraptions without the proper items, though doing so expends other resources, which unfortunately encourages you to make contraptions as simple as possible to minimize their cost to reproduce.

Tears of the Kingdom controls mostly like its predecessor, which is a very good thing. However, there are some actions with frustratingly-designed controls that were not addressed in this re-release. Without going into too much detail to avoid spoilers, there are cases where characters can join you on your quest and give access to new abilities. However, using these abilities involves walking up to them and pressing A, which is usually not easy to do during combat. This ends up making these abilities not worth using most of the time.

Also, holding Up on the D-Pad brings up a menu of every material in your inventory, and you can use the right stick to cycle left and right. This can be used for selecting an item to throw, to attach to an arrow, or to drop on the ground and attach to another weapon. However, there are hundreds of materials to cycle through, with insufficient options to sort them by. Scrolling through this menu was always a slog, so it’s annoying that it wasn’t changed in this version. It turns out that another Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, just recently received a free update that fixed a nearly identical menu-related issue, making it even more confusing that it wasn’t fixed here.

On a more positive note, the sound design is quite nice. Two years ago, I was sort of disappointed in the choice to stick with a more subtle soundtrack, like Breath of the Wild, but I’ve completely changed my stance on it. The jazzy instruments that accompany the sky, the corrupted vocals that play when fighting Ganondorf’s servants, and the many songs that incorporate an erhu all work together to make an excellent soundtrack. There are some especially beautiful tracks later on in the game, as well.

The cel-shaded visual style borrowed from Breath of the Wild looks as great as it has since we were introduced to it more than eight years ago. This is also the area where the Switch 2 Edition really shines. You can now enjoy enhanced textures and a higher resolution. HDR is also used when playing on compatible displays. This ends up helping colorful effects, like the Zonai magic, to really pop.

You can also enjoy better load times. Before, switching weapons caused a very distracting pause to load them in, but switching weapons is just about instant now. The framerate has also been boosted. This is a complete game changer! Originally, the game capped at 30 FPS, but the framerate would drop to 20 FPS when doing just about anything. Now, it runs at a mostly stable 60 FPS. It feels so much better to play with this change. Unfortunately, though, I’ve still had frame drops when using contraptions (though they were much less frequent than before). Even something simple, like a car with cannons on it, caused slowdown from all the explosions. It is also worth noting that if you play the original without the Upgrade Pack on Switch 2, you will likely still experience fewer frame drops, thanks to the better hardware (though the framerate will be locked to 30 FPS).

These graphical improvements are the main substance of this version, but there are other new features as well. For starters, you can save two files at once, and if you’ve played the original version, your progress will transfer to this new version by default.

The rest of the changes, however, are incorporated into a new service on the Nintendo Switch App, called Zelda Notes. The first feature with this service—and the closest thing to new content—is Voice Memories. When you visit various locations around Hyrule while having the service open on your phone, you’ll trigger some voice-acted dialogue. Each individual Voice Memory isn’t very long, but there are 240 of them, narrated by Zelda and other characters. These end up building on the world-building and backstory of some characters.

There is also an interactive map that you can use. You can use this map to display all sorts of collectibles, enemies, and landmarks. This map even updates in real time, tracking things as you find them. This is especially helpful, as there are quite a few things to discover that could not be easily tracked before. You can also choose to be guided to your destination with a voice, not unlike features provided by apps for real-world navigation. Though just like those kinds of apps, I noticed that this feature sometimes struggled to give accurate directions, especially when it came to finding things hidden in winding caves.

There are some less significant features, too. Many random stats are now tracked, and you can earn medals for reaching milestones. You can also compare your stats to other players’ stats. Zelda amiibo can also be registered to the service. You can normally only scan each amiibo once per day, but if you use an amiibo five times, you can scan it twice each day. Photos taken using the in-game camera can also be sent to Zelda Notes. You can then decorate them and save them permanently to your phone.

Zelda Notes also introduces a feature called Item Sharing. You can send items to a storage box within Zelda Notes. You can always pull them out, giving you an unconventional but much-needed storage system, or you can send them to Breath of the Wild. You can even create a QR code and share it with friends, which will allow them to add items to your storage or remove them. Frustratingly, though, you’re limited to sending up to 10 items per day. I happen to have 999 arrows in Tears of the Kingdom, but only around 50 in Breath of the Wild. It would be nice to give some assistance to my Breath of the Wild save file, but only being able to transfer 10 arrows per day isn’t exactly going to cut it.

This last feature is arguably the most useful. Originally when creating contraptions, you could only save eight of your own blueprints to recreate them. For some reason, this is still the case, but now you can send creations to Zelda Notes, where you can save up to 60 creations. You can even share QR codes with others and find QR codes online that you can send to the game to easily build other players’ wild contraptions. In a game about creating things, not having a way of sharing ideas was a huge missed opportunity before, so I’m glad to see that changed now.

Of course, there is violence with medieval weaponry, like swords and bows. The foes you’ll come across include monsters, skeletons, and occasionally people, which disappear in a puff of smoke upon defeat, but they can drop gross parts like cartoony guts when they die.

There is also a bar in one town that serves alcoholic beverages. This was the case in Breath of the Wild, but Link was considered too young to get a drink himself then. Now that several years have passed, you can get alcohol for yourself at this bar.

As always in Zelda, there are some themes of reincarnation. Many characters worship a goddess named Hylia, and you need to pray to statues of this goddess to increase your health and stamina. There are likewise references to demons, from Ganondorf himself to a demonic statue that you can pray to in order to modify your stats. Magic is used by both yourself and enemies, mostly in the form of magic wands and Zonai magic. Finally, I’ve encountered silly optional quests involving fortune-telling chickens and seals.

There are a number of scantily clad females, such as the Gerudo and the Great Fairies. There is also a bizarre piece of equipment you can obtain that gives Link a pink wig and lipstick. There is a very effeminate man who wears pink clothes and girlish earrings that you can interact with during some quests. There is also a house which belonged to Link in the previous game, but is Zelda’s now. It’s not entirely clear, but there seems to be some implication that both characters lived in the house during the time between games. Finally, while not a moral failing of Tears of the Kingdom directly, the new ability to share contraptions online via QR codes opens up the possibility of players sharing obscene creations. If you have a kid who wants to make use of the Zelda Notes service, definitely be aware of this risk.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is a solid enhancement of one of the best Zelda games ever made (and my personal favorite game). The new Switch 2 hardware allows for a much better looking and performing game than what we had in 2023. Zelda Notes also provides some very helpful quality-of-life features, though it is admittedly strange to have them implemented through a mobile app, rather than in the game directly. However, there are some quality-of-life features that seem like obvious additions to an enhanced version, but are missing, such as the aforementioned control issues. Despite these missed opportunities, if you plan on playing Tears of the Kingdom on the Switch 2, I would highly recommend paying extra for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition for a much smoother adventure.

-Tyler Ferguson