The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is less than a day away from launch, and ahead of its release, reviews for the open world behemoth have started going live across a number of outlets and publications, as we reported yesterday. And based on those impressions, it seems that Nintendo and the Zelda franchise have once again delivered a generation-defining game.
At the time of writing, Tears of the Kingdom is sitting at an OpenCritic score of 97 (one higher than Breath of the Wild) and a Metacritic score of 97 (same as Breath of the Wild), and has received extremely high scoring reviews across the board. GameSpot, for instance, has awarded the game a score of 10/10, with praise for its “gorgeous, serene open world with activity and discovery around every corner” and “an emotionally evocative story that revolves around a central, captivating mystery”, among other things.
A similarly glowing review comes from IGN, which also awards the game a score of 10/10, calling it “an unfathomable follow-up to one of the greatest games ever made” that improves upon 2017’s Breath of the Wild “in every way”. Meanwhile, VGC’s 5/5 review calls it “one of the very best games on Nintendo Switch”, describing the Ultrahand system as “joyous and genuinely game-changing”.
Game Informer has awarded the game a score of 9.75/10, saying that it delivers “a brilliant adventure providing players a staggering amount of agency in how they approach nearly every gameplay instance”. GamesRadar’s review, which is scored at 4.5/5, mentions some issues with the UI and a couple of annoying boss fights, but says the game is “definitely worth the wait”.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is due out for the Nintendo Switch on May 12. Our own review will be going live in the coming days, so stay tuned.
