The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I had a random itch to play Tears of the Kingdom again so I started it up and completed a trek in memory of one of my favorite moments playing this game. I played it mostly upon its release in May of 2023 and got over 200 hours in it.

At one part of the game there’s these sky islands that have nonstop storming happening. But not like any other storm in the game, this one is the fiercest and I could barely see anything. But at this point of the game I was roaming around trying to find all the shrines. I would go back and forth between doing this and the main storyline. I was still near the beginning of the storyline and ironically there’s a quest I would end up doing later in the storyline that makes it so it stops storming in those sky islands but I traversed them way before doing that.

I was going between each one barely not slipping and falling to the ground of Hyrule as the rain made it hard to climb the walls. All I was following was the sensor beeping, signaling the proximity of a shrine. I just kept pushing through the storm with all the elements against me and finally find my way to the biggest part of these sky islands. This was Dragonhead Island. I found the shrine as it was accompanied by this peaceful song of ambient strings and what sounds like a mallet instrument similar to that of a glockenspiel with other instruments appearing randomly but briefly. There was peace here. It made me think of reaching a safe room in Resident Evil but this was way more serene and rewarding feeling than any of those save rooms. It was bliss and one of the happiest moments I’ve experienced in a game.

This feeling is how I feel when getting home after a long day at work. Or more so a long week and getting home Friday. Ready to relax. Tears of the Kingdom had so many great moments and is one of my favorite Zelda games. It came to me during one of the toughest times of my life and every moment playing felt like this moment of peace and escape.