Nintendo’s latest megahit, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, has been out for a couple of months, and like a lot of the company’s titles, it’s had a pretty sticky price. That uncomfortable new $70 baseline price for current-gen video games has held strong, but now the game is on sale for a comparatively meager $52 ($18 off).
This deal lands amidst Amazon Prime Day 2023. The only catch is you’ll need to buy the physical cartridge edition, though that’s not much of a catch. Over the long term, physical media is the best way to make sure you keep access to your games, and this is definitely one you’ll want to keep.
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Why We Like Tears of the Kingdom
Photograph: Nintendo
It was always going to be tough to top Nintendo’s breakout hit, Breath of the Wild, but somehow Tears of the Kingdom managed to pull it off. Not by repeating or obliterating the pattern of its predecessor, but by improving on it. The robust physics-powered open world of the original gets new life with a powerful crafting system, plus an assortment of extra powers.
Much of the world of Tears of the Kingdom will be familiar to Breath of the Wild players, but the setting has advanced a few years, so things have changed a bit. Moreover, there are new areas in the floating sky islands and creepy depths that build on the foundation of the existing world. If you spent time getting to know every crevice of Mount Doom or every river in Lanayru, that knowledge will pay off when you’re exploring the new maps.
The crafting system—known in the game as Ultrahand—is the standout star of the new abilities. An array of new devices, and the ability to combine them into machines of your own design, has spawned an entire subculture of engineers that will no doubt have Doom running inside this game within the year. But even if you don’t go that nuts with it, it’s still a blast rocketing up mountains and flying across the vast desert that took so much time to walk across in Breath of the Wild.
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