The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
There's so much to say about this game. People who haven't played it complain that it's just a glorified DLC for Breath of the Wild, and while it may reuse assets, concepts, and much of the map, I think it's pretty clear that the two are still fundamentally different games, and there's no possible way this could just be an add-on. Even if you ignore the hugely expanded map and the brand-new story, the gameplay changes alone make this feel like a whole new playground. Gone is Link's Sheikah Slate and the powers that come with it, as there's now a whole new collection of incredible abilities at his fingertips! I meant that literally, by the way.
Adopting the entire arm of a powerful, long-dead Zonai king, Link can now rewind time for individual objects, fuse materials to create unique weapons with surprising effects, fly up to and phase through ceilings, and magically assemble vehicles, drones, and platforms. The entire game is now entirely built around learning and using these abilities to their fullest extent. There are puzzles scattered through the entire world, as well as many shrines, that take advantage of these powers, but it's specifically the fusion abilities that really turned Tears of the Kingdom into its own game.
What I would consider the lesser of the two fusion abilities is simply referred to as fuse. In the single greatest response to complaints about weapon durability in Breath of the Wild, you can now essentially craft your own weapons at any time. When Ganondorf reawakens at the beginning of the game and unleashes the gloom coating the depths into the rest of Hyrule, virtually every weapon decays, leaving them significantly impaired for any sort of combat. However, using any of these decayed weapons as a base, Link can use the fuse ability to combine them with any other weapon or resource in his inventory, and sometimes even with things in the environment that he couldn't otherwise carry. Connecting two weapons together can be useful in some contexts, but it's all the other options that really shake things up.
Almost every enemy you defeat will drop some sort of fusible material that will change the appearance of whatever weapon you attach it to, which will usually provide a higher stat boost than just fusing two weapons. Elemental materials, like lizalfos horns and gemstones, can give your attacks some useful extra effects, but they usually don't buff the strength all that much. If it stopped there, I'd still feel like there was enough customizability and accessibility to weapon parts to consider the weapon durability complaints solved, but it gets even better. If you experiment with the more unique materials, you can have a ton of fun. Add a Zonai cannon to a spear and you effectively have a grenade launcher! Want to auto-parry attacks? Fuse a talus heart to your shield. Sit back and confuse your enemies into fighting each other by shooting some muddlebud arrows into the hordes. There are so many incredible possibilities that I might have even been a bit excited when one of my weapons broke. I think that fuse is one of the most clever mechanics I've ever used in a videogame, yet it isn't as game-changing as Link's other fusion-based ability.
Ultrahand is the real star of Tears of the Kingdom. While it may seem a little daunting at first, once you get the hang of it, you'll never play the same again. Similar to magnesis in Breath of the Wild, ultrahand allows you to pick up and move objects which can then be used to solve puzzles and attack enemies. However, ultrahand isn't limited to just metal. Instead, you can pick up virtually any loose, inanimate object, be it a log, a horse cart, a giant rock, a sword, or anything in between. That in itself opens up all kinds of possibilities, but the real fun of ultrahand is its fusion capabilities. Anything you can pick up can be fused to anything else you can pick up, allowing you to make whatever your heart desires. The addition of Zonai technology, such as fans, rockets, wheels, flamethrowers, and more, makes me think that the developers watched all of those crazy exploit videos for Breath of the Wild and decided that they could make all of that into actual features.
Now, with a little bit of creativity and patience (or some quick Google searches,) you can make all kinds of incredible machines. A few standouts for me were the hoverbike that I planted a giant brightbloom on and conquered the entire depths upon, the catapult I used to launch wandering koroks across rivers with, and the enemy-seeking flamethrower drones that I used when I wasn't feeling like fighting alone. When you unlock autobuild, which I somehow managed to do before I completed any shrines outside of the tutorial, you can save your favorite creations and receive schematics for designs you may not have considered before. You can even build those saved schematics without all of the necessary pieces if you mined enough zonaite in the depths to exchange. I was really overwhelmed by all of this stuff when I first started playing and thought I might just ignore it in the end. However, once I got comfortable with it, I was hoverbiking everywhere, and it was amazing!
With new mechanics like fuse and ultrahand, a massively expanded map, and much better dungeon design, Tears of the Kingdom takes the already-stellar foundation laid by Breath of the Wild and makes one of the most unique, grand adventures that the entire medium has to offer. I don't think there's ever been a videogame that has given both this much freedom to the player and this much interactivity between everything in its world at the same time, and the result is nothing short of magical. My grandparents were living with us this past Summer, and my grandfather is an outdoorsy guy, vastly preferring gardening to gaming, but if I was playing Tears of the Kingdom, he would probably find his way to the other end of the couch and get fully engaged. If he can get into a game like that just by watching it, you know it has to be something special.
The game is available for Switch here (as of 9/30/23): https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-switch/
