Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom poised to rule the charts

Released on Friday, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is already one of the highest-rated games in the world.

The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom nintendo featured

A poster for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom game (Image: Nintendo)

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Nintendo has done it again with the latest release in their popular series of adventure video games, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Released on Friday, the game has been met with critical acclaim and a score of 97/100 on review aggregation site Metacritic, making it one of the highest-rated video games of all time.

The game invites players to explore a fantasy kingdom as the elven hero, Link, and chart their own path through the world, uncovering its many secrets. The puzzles and battles involve players’ intellect as much as their reflexes, which should make it appealing to a wide range of gamers. Critics have praised the game for offering a vast level of creative freedom, allowing players to fabricate their own weapons and madcap contraptions.

Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma attributes the series’ success to the willingness to trust the player’s intellectual curiosity. “The feeling of satisfaction comes from exploring and figuring things out on their own – that’s the route to joy,” he said per a report published in The Guardian.

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The Zelda series has been a leap forward in the creative and technological possibilities of video games ever since it debuted nearly 30 years ago on the Nintendo Entertainment System. With each new release, the series has represented a significant leap forward, introducing innovations in controls and world-building that are still being iterated by game designers today.

Breath of the Wild, released in 2017 alongside the Nintendo Switch console, sold over 30 million copies, making it Nintendo’s biggest money-maker. With over 125 million Switch consoles sold until now, the company is hoping that Tears of the Kingdom can repeat this success.

For the uninitiated, Zelda is a popular video game series created by Nintendo in 1986. The series follows the adventures of Link, a young hero who must save the land of Hyrule from the evil forces of Ganon, the King of Darkness. The games feature a mix of action, puzzle-solving, exploration and fantasy elements. Zelda is one of the most influential and successful video game franchises of all time, with over 100 million copies sold worldwide. The series has also spawned numerous spin-offs, adaptations and merchandise.

In India, the game can be bought for Rs 6,499 from Amazon for the Nintendo Switch.