When The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived earlier this year, comparisons between it and Elden Ring were a given. Both are sprawling action RPGs, set in fantastical worlds brimming with peril and promise. Both explore themes of warped time cycles, of world devastation at the hands of bad actors, and of good versus evil. Both are intelligent evolutions of their creators' finest ideas, pushing the envelope and setting new standards in the open-world sandbox space. And in terms of fanfare, both are, quite simply, hot shit.
For the most part, I think those comparisons are fair. Assuming they're done so with a bigger picture, broader strokes outlook, there are similarities between the two. What I'm less interested in, however, are the meticulous, often shoe-horned side-by-side observations that dig into each game's mechanics, combat systems, and narrative structures. To those ends, Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom couldn't be more different.
