The Fuse ability allows you to upgrade any weapon or shield using animal parts and other easy-to-find resources. The opposite is true in Tears of the Kingdom, which prioritizes ingenuity and inventiveness in the early game in a way that FromSoft’s masterpiece doesn’t. (And you can only take down that sleeping dragon for a bunch of cheap souls once per playthrough.)

But your current stat levels may be far too low to actually equip these items without several more hours of grinding. Yes, you can fluke into finding powerful weapons, armor, and accessories at a fairly low level while you’re exploring the Lands Between. But doing so requires a significant investment of time - and considerable skill. It’s all very well and good to be told by Dark Souls fanboys that you “just” need to create a Bleed build, or a Rot build, or a mage build. Though you can customize your character in Elden Ring to your liking, your ability to do so depends largely on your build, and developing a build requires you to grind souls, the in-game currency that you exchange for level-ups and stat points. Perhaps they bounced off the game because of the intricate challenge of its combat, or because they lost valuable items and progress one too many times. While plenty of players devoured Elden Ring in its entirety, many others left their journey through the Lands Between unfinished. There are so many things to do and so many ways to do them.īut most importantly, despite all these distractions, you won’t feel like you’ve lost your edge in Tears of the Kingdomif you spend the weekend hunting for rare armor or spelunking in caves - or even if you put your Switch down for a couple of days. Or you can piss away six hours to build a giant dude with a flaming dong. You can play Tears of the Kingdom for 30 minutes and make meaningful progress. Fast-travel points number in the hundreds and most of the shrines and caves in Tears of the Kingdom are conveniently bite-sized. If you get caught off guard by a gaggle of dancing pigmen or a centaur with a chip on his shoulder, you’ll respawn a short distance away - close enough to re-engage if you choose, but also free to avoid conflict entirely. The long-awaited sequel to 2017’s enormously influential Breath of the Wild doesn’t want to waste your time on backtracking or retracing your steps. That’s a good thing because you will be doing it rather often. There’s very little punishment for dying in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

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