The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is less than 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 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 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 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.