Shrines in Tears of the Kingdom... unlock all that you see as soon as you can

I have been a fan of Zelda since the very first game was released in 1985. To me, it is one of the most amazing franchises in the history of gaming and Nintendo has done very well to keep it fresh and interesting and even though I complained a bit initially when they kind of overhauled the gameplay in new releases, they grew on me. Hell, I even completed and kind of learned to love Zelda 2 on the NES even though, let's be honest, that game sucks compared to the rest of them... "I am Error!"

So when Tears of the Kingdom was given to me for my Nintendo Switch, a system that I am yet to purchase a single game for and rely on my friends' libraries, I was a little less than enthusiastic because I was one of those guys that hated Breath of the Wild so much that I never even made it through the first area.

src

I think the only reason why I bothered to persevere in this game was because I don't have any other options right now. I only have 3 games to mess with and I am still in the Honeymoon phase regarding the rather unique/annoying controller that is the Switch default. I suppose a lot of this can be attributed to PS4 fatigue and the fact that my PS library is so incredibly huge that I regularly give up on almost anything in there. In a way this kind of brings me back to old-school gaming days where there were no websites to vet a game on before you bought something, and if you got stuck with a title that was less than amazing you played it anyway. That is the only reason that I can come up with for why it is that I ever completed Ghosts and Goblins.

src

At first I was pretty unimpressed with the gameplay because much like Breath, what it is that you decide to do is really left up to you. There is almost zero hand-holding in this game and for me, this resulted in me being almost completely lost after I left the "training island" that is the first portion of the game. Once I hit the mainland of Hyrule, I was, just like I presume most people were, just wandering with a WTF am I supposed to do! type of reaction going on in my mind.

However, if you just stick with it, this ability to kind of just do whatever you want starts to grow on you and you start to appreciate the fact that still, even up to the point where I am at where I have more than half of the map explored, I am still not really 100% what the hell I am supposed to be aiming for. Yeah, I'm meant to be saving Zelda, that much is obvious, but I still have no idea how or where.

src

Shrines

Here is one thing that I really like that isn't terribly evident when you first start out. The shrines, and there are a lot of them, are a fantastic way of slowly introducing you to higher functions of the game. Sure you might have already figured out how to throw stuff and attach various items to arrows thus seriously improving the damage output, but once you are forced to do this inside of a shrine in order to complete it, the point gets nailed home. There are a TON of controls in this game and I can't even imagine how the devs must have worked that out. The Switch controller has a ton of buttons on it and Tears uses ever single one of them. Mostly when I play games that utilize this much of the controller I tend to forget the commands but since I really have no choice but to get used to them. The shrines not only allow you to upgrade your stamina and health, but they also really nail home the importance of more advanced controls. This is something that I can't even imagine how they would have introduced it otherwise.

src

Something else I love about the shrines that might not be evident when you first start is that they are not just there to give you opportunities to upgrade your stats. Since shrines are all fast-travel points, they are normally located near something that would otherwise be difficult to get to and this is most important when you are going through some rather tedious aspects of the "sky world" where one wrong move results in you falling to the earth below.

They also serve as points where you can warp into a distant land that you have not yet unlocked all of. Walking or even riding a horse to a location can take a very long time, so the fast-travel is absolutely essential in this game. Because of this, I think that most people will work to unlock every shrine that they see as soon as they see it. It's gonna be tough going to get to it the first time because often they are surrounded by something impassable and the only way to get to it is to fall from the floating sky areas. I love the way that the game forces you to figure this out without insisting that it is necessary.

src

The option to dive from areas above seems like it is going to get you a lot further than it actually can though. Until you have a bunch of stamina the amount of horizontal travel you can possibly do is quite limited. Once again, they don't explicitly tell you this, you just kind of have to figure it out on your own. Understand this though: I am NOT an advanced gamer and I was able to figure these things out, so I think they have done a wonderful job of keeping it cryptic enough to make it difficult, but the keys are in your hand and you just need to look around a bit to figure out what it is that you are going to need to do next.

That isn't to say that the overall trajectory of how to complete the game is obvious like it would be in other, far more linear games out there. This game certainly is not that and in fact, there is so much extra material that is not linked (pun intended) to the main story that I think most people will find themselves getting seriously side-tracked just like I have many times over.

From what I am told in game (I try to avoid as many spoilers as possible online) I am meant to be fixing problems in 4 areas of Hyrule and thus far I have only completed one. This took a very long time and at least in my opinion, was quite tough. I would imagine that future areas are going to be even harder especially with my very limited skills and the fact that I haven't even bothered to try to figure out most of the best cooking recipes.

Once I started unlocking shrines as soon as I possibly could though, the world really opened up for me. I am still avoiding combat almost all the time and I will get around to actually doing that later. In the meantime I am really enjoying this game and I play it for hours in a row without ever getting bored! This game is definitely worth the $60 IMO.