The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
The highly anticipated and long awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild is finally here! I've played for maybe 5 hours thus far and basically just got out of the tutorial area.
While exploring caverns under Hyrule castle, Zelda and Link discover several murals depicting the origins of Hyrule, and what Zelda refers to as the The Imprisoning War. I'm not sure if this is meant to be the events from Skyward Sword or something else entirely. This story introduces a new species, the Zonai, who were thought to be gods by the ancient Hylians, and were responsible for founding Hyrule and the royal family. In the next chamber, the pair discovers a mummy, sealed by a dismembered arm that falls away as soon as they enter. Link and the Master Sword are both badly damaged. The mummy begins to raise the castle causing a rift to open up that Zelda falls into. Link attempts to save her, but she vanishes, and the severed arm saves Link. Link awakens elsewhere, finding his arm has been replaced with the severed arm. A Zonai named Rauru, or rather his ghost, explains he had to replace Link's arm with his own and took him to a sky island to recover.
Similarly to BotW, this is area is essentially a tutorial area where Link gets various abilities, and the game teaches the player how to use them. At the end of it, Zelda contacts Link telling him to find her, and Link returns to Hyrule below. The new abilities are interesting. Ultra Hand allows you to move certain objects and glue them together. Fuse allows you to fuse certain objects to your weapon or shield to enhance them to some degree. Ascend allows you to jump up through solid objects above you. And Recall reverses time for certain objects to a limited effect.
So far, I'm very much enjoying it. It's got a lot of similarities to BotW, but is also doing its own thing. Looking forward to seeing where this game goes.
Edit more story spoilers:
I've gotten the Dragons Tears memories.... Turns out, Zelda was transported to the past thanks to a Secret Stone, which amplifies a person's natural ability (each of the Sage's have one). Zelda has both light and time, but her stone amplified her time ability. She finds herself at the time leading up to the Imprisoning War and quickly becomes friends with King Rauru and his wife, Sonia. Zelda begins trying to find a way back to her time but Ganondorf eventually arrives, pledging his allegiance to the Rauru. Despite Zelda's misgivings, Raru accepts, assuring her he only does it to keep an eye on him. Ganondorf predictably betrays them, kills Queen Sonia, and takes her Secret Stone, transforming into the Demon King. Zelda warns Raru that in her time, she already knows they weren't able to defeat Ganondorf. Rauru isn't so sure, pointing out Zelda's presence in their time has altered events.
Nevertheless, the fight against Ganondorf still plays out the same. Rauru ends up sacrificing himself to seal away Ganondorf until he eventual breaks free at the start of the game. Zelda ends up with the broken Master Sword thanks to some more time travel, and realizes she'd be able to restore it, and still needs a way back to her own time. Thanks to some research from Rauru's sister, Zelda swallows her Secret Stone, which turns her into an immortal dragon, but looses her sense of self in the process. This allows Link to get the Master Sword back, as it has been recovering thanks to Zelda's light, stuck in her hair on her forehead for thousands of years.
Still not sure how this works with Skyward Sword's origins of Hyrule... I kinda get the impression we're supposed to think of the previous games as stories that have fallen into more myth and legend rather than accurate depictions of those events.
I've only done two of the temples thus far. I'm a little disappointed with them... Most of the challenge is simply climbing the sky islands to reach the actual temple. Once at the temple itself, there's 5 locks or whatever you have to reach, and then fight the boss. Granted, you still have to solve puzzles for each lock or whatever, but, it just doesn't make it feel like there is much to these temples. The Divine Beasts in BotW had the same criticism, but it didn't bother me in that game because they were essentially mech vehicles. I was expecting Temples in this game to be bigger.