More Tears Per Second

My other justification for a Switch 2 - other than punching dirt for big bananas - was to finally play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with a stable framerate. I know that may sound absurd, shelling out new-console money to replay a game... but.

I really like Tears of the Kingdom.

Enough to sink dozens hundreds! of hours into its Switch 2 enhanced port over the past few months. And this time I did way more than awaken ancient sages and build up a Ganon-stomping arsenal: I went full-on obsessive completionist.

This time I checked off all the side-quests, all Misko's hidden treasure, all the Hyrule Compendium photos, all the Monster Medals (which I didn't know existed!), all the Bubbul Gems, all the Korok Seeds. A thousand of those little fuckers.

Not because the collectible micro-puzzles were particularly fun, and certainly not for the in-game reward.

I just really like Tears of the Kingdom.

The Zelda Notes companion app was a pretty huge help, particularly its map's "Hide Discovered Destinations" i.e. show-what-I'm-missing toggle. It's a bit of a shame that TotK's Switch 2 update apparently wasn't able to add this in-game - and kinda weird to be using a companion device in parallel with Link's own in-game tablet, while the Switch 2 itself is busy ... running the game - but I digress. The app is definitely a boon for completionism.

(The voice memos, uh, "Memories?" unlocked by the app are disappointingly bland, and seem more like a technical proof-of-concept than a meaningful feature. Of course I still collected them all, for the sake of 100% completion.)

Anyway- even on my fourth journey through this Breath of the Wild-based representation of Hyrule, I still found plenty of satisfaction from exploring it, scouring it, and conquering it. Shit, I'm still engaged enough to be curious about the Hyrule Warriors sequels, Age of Calamity and Age of Imprisonment.

Though I do hope that Link's next big adventure comes with a fresher overworld map. And maybe more house stuff.