The 14 best Zelda-likes to play after Tears of the Kingdom

With the latest inflow of Recreation Boy, Recreation Boy Shade, and Recreation Boy Advance video games to Nintendo’s on-line subscription service, it’s simpler than it’s ever been to play a lot of the mainline Zelda video games. We right here at epicgamejourney have been blazing by way of the sequence’ traditional catalog in celebration of the discharge of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s a pleasure to play the video games again to again and watch the sequence evolve in microcosm between every subsequent entry.

However typically, it’s simply as a lot enjoyable, if no more so, to play the video games that had been impressed by Zelda — to see how totally different studios interpreted the pillars of Nintendo’s action-adventure franchise.

As a result of, actually: What makes a Zelda sport a Zelda sport? Is it the characters? Is it the puzzle-based dungeons? Is it assortment of cool new instruments, which you’ll must grasp in an effort to take down the subsequent boss? For every new Zelda sport that strengthened these pillars, simply as many got here alongside to refute them. (I actually am a fan of Majora’s Masks, maybe essentially the most subversive chapter within the “let’s shake issues up” line of considering.) It’s this malleability that has led to such a various vary of “Zelda-like” video games.

So, for those who, like us, are nonetheless hungering for extra Zelda within the wake of Breath of the Wild’s direct sequel, we’ve compiled a listing of our favourite alternate options that embody the time period “Zelda-like.” Some give attention to puzzles; others embrace time manipulation; one offers us the strongest glimpse but at a Zelda sport totally centered on fight. We stored the factors obscure as a result of, effectively, the factors had been obscure to start with. And that’s why it’s so enjoyable.

Our newest replace added Portal 2, Nier: Automata, and Genshin Impression.

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Eastward

The place to play: Mac, Nintendo Change, Home windows PC, Xbox One

The Legend of Zelda’s affect on Eastward is obvious the second you load up the sport; its gameplay and magnificence oozes Zelda proper right down to the center meter denoting your hit factors. From Chinese language developer Pixpil, Eastward is a 2021 role-playing sport that takes the participant, effectively, eastward right into a mysterious post-apocalyptic world with a gruff man named John and a magical child named Sam. The world’s puzzles require the participant to make use of each John and Sam in several methods; John’s acquired a frying pan good for whacking enemies, whereas Sam’s magical powers stun enemies. They’re controllable concurrently, utilizing a controller’s set off to convey one or the opposite to the entrance. Half Earthbound and half Zelda, Eastward is a must-play for anybody keen on pixel-art RPGs. —Nicole Carpenter

Loss of life’s Door

The place to play: Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Collection X

If Eastward is Earthbound meets The Legend of Zelda, then Loss of life’s Door is a mix of Darkish Souls and Zelda. Loss of life’s Door has the top-down exploration of many Zelda video games, the place gamers acquire upgrades and instruments whereas shifting by way of puzzles and dungeons, however pairs that with a darkish world and difficult boss battles extra akin to Darkish Souls. It’s a few crow, named Crow, who’s a reaper of souls — their journey takes them from the forms of the afterlife into the world the place souls reside. It’s a easy sport that does every thing close to completely, a kinder “onerous” sport with an issue stage that ramps up as the sport continues. —Nicole Carpenter

Okami HD

The place to play: Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, Home windows PC, Xbox One

Okami has develop into recognized for its ostensible similarity to Twilight Princess, the Zelda title that options Hyperlink in lupine kind. However the similarities lengthen past this superficial character comparability — to the extent that followers contemplate it among the best unofficial Zelda video games. It’s speckled with puzzles, and clearing areas provides to the protagonist’s toolkit: a sequence of Celestial Brush powers that allow you to modify the surroundings round you. The sport appears to have Zelda in its DNA, even in its smallest moments, which I’ve unpacked in one other piece:

Like in Zelda video games, dungeons had elemental themes: I used levers to decrease the waterline in a cursed pirate ship, and hearth powers in a lava-themed dungeon. Although Okami’s puzzles are much less open-ended than these of Breath of the Wild — it’s fairly apparent which brushstrokes you utilize to resolve issues — I used to be nonetheless wowed by the powers I amassed, and the way they let me modify the world.

—Nicole Clark

No one Saves the World

The place to play: Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Collection X

Drinkbox Studios’ top-down dungeon crawler is Zelda for a brand new era, from its zany overworld encounters to the procedurally generated grottoes beneath. Its mix-and-match development permits gamers to veer off within the route of their most well-liked play type whereas nonetheless holding out the choice of seeing and unlocking every thing. Most significantly, No one is about in a once-cheerful fairyland price saving, whose kooky mission-giving NPCs at all times summon at the least a dry chuckle. —Owen Good

Tunic

The place to play: Mac, Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Collection X

Tunic stars a tiny fox that wields a sword and a protect, clearly a nod to The Legend of Zelda’s hero Hyperlink — the fox even wears a inexperienced tunic. Filled with puzzles and secrets and techniques, Tunic is a sport that makes use of nostalgia for video games and franchises like The Legend of Zelda, largely by way of its important guide, which is constructed proper into the sport. When Tunic begins, the guide is incomplete, which suggests there’s tons of data lacking. The participant has to navigate Tunic’s world utilizing this incomplete data to search out extra pages, unlocking new methods to resolve puzzles. It’s the secrets and techniques and mysteries of the world, which typically imply asking mates for assist, that make Tunic particular — the preventing itself isn’t the draw. It appears like enjoying a Zelda sport as a child, one the place I may speak secrets and techniques and techniques with my mates. —Nicole Carpenter

Unsighted

The place to play: Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, Home windows PC, Xbox One

Unsighted takes lots of traditional Zelda parts and makes them new due to a singular (and truthfully tense) twist. You play as an automata that requires a gem substance to reside. Sadly this substance is more and more scarce — as such, everybody’s lives (together with yours) are on the clock. When the clock runs out, you develop into unsighted, and liable to assault mates and lovers. The sport wears its traditional Zelda influences on its sleeve, with a full three layers of map bounded off by areas that require versatile and artistic drawback fixing to beat. The protagonist’s equipment grows after finishing every area, with novel traversal instruments and weapons that vary from an enormous prime that permits you to journey over excessive wires to shuriken that set issues on hearth or flip water into ice. —Nicole Clark

Fez

The place to play: Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, Home windows PC

In the event you’ve performed Fez, or at the least keep in mind when it was introduced, the sensation you had when the 2D panorama rotated and revealed the opposite aspect of the cliff or cave or platform so that you can climb. First printed in 2012 (most just lately in 2021 for Nintendo Change), Fez is worthy of the Zelda-like mantle in how the participant discovers and adjustments the enjoying area and works to unlock the secrets and techniques inside. —OG

Portal 2

The place to play: Mac, Nintendo Change, PlayStation 3, Home windows PC, Xbox 360

After I consider Zelda, I consider nice environmental puzzles, and the Portal video games nonetheless stand out as a number of the finest puzzle video games ever launched. In Portal 2, you play as Chell, a playtester trapped within the crumbling ruins of a defunct analysis company referred to as Aperture Science. Because the story develops, you’ll attempt to escape the company labyrinth because the diabolical supercomputer GLaDOS places your wits to the check.

The sport is sort of like one large (and incredible) Zelda dungeon. You’ll remedy puzzles room by room by strategically inserting portals that enable Chell to discover and manipulate the surroundings to get from level A to B. Certain, Portal 2 doesn’t have as a lot to supply so far as open exploration goes, however even this linear sport has its fair proportion of secrets and techniques tucked inside crumbling lab environments. It’s a must-play for any Zelda fan. – Ana Diaz

Nier: Automata

The place to play: Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, Home windows PC, Xbox One

Okay, so what if Hyperlink listened to Lana Del Rey and was a tragic lady? That’s how I might describe Nier: Automata to any Zelda followers within the sport.

Nier: Automata is about in a dystopian future the place humankind is underneath the assault of alien robots. To combat these dangerous robots, people created their very own androids, referred to as YoRHa items, in order that the horny, human-like YoRHa machines may combat the rusty alien machines. The premise may sound foolish, but it surely’s a shocking sport on a number of ranges and positively a incredible subsequent play for any Zelda fan.

You begin the story enjoying because the thigh-high boot-wearing android 2B, however you’ll ultimately play as others and see the story unfold from the attitude of a number of characters. As we see the world in damage from its numerous observers, the sport takes on a contemplative nature that grapples with basic questions like what it means to like or to be human. For anybody who appreciates the darker features of the Zelda sequence, Nier: Automata is a superb sport to play subsequent. – Ana Diaz

Genshin Impression

The place to play: Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC

Genshin Impression has at all times been in comparison with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, however the free-to-play sport from Hoyoverse has extra to supply than simply being a Breath of a Wild-like. From the pillared cliffs of the Guaguang Stone Forest in Liyue to the glittering crystalline coral reefs of Fontaine, Genshin Impression comprises a number of the most original environmental design and finest exploration I’ve ever seen in an open-world journey sport. That, and the beautiful orchestrated soundtrack from Yu-Peng Chen make the sport an incredible possibility for anybody searching for a brand new journey after Zelda.

Nonetheless, this advice does include just a few caveats. It’s a gacha sport, so you have to do day by day and weekly quests (and simply typically sink time into the sport) to build up in-game foreign money to gamble and get an opportunity to play as sure characters. Along with this, the sport comprises a number of winding and superfluous quests that drag on for manner too lengthy. It’s a fairly totally different expertise from anybody coming straight from a Zelda sport, so simply be sure you lean into the enjoyable exploration features of the sport if you wish to strive. – Ana Diaz

Outer Wilds

The place to play: Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Collection X

2021 could have been the yr of time-loop video video games, however none of them approached the brilliance of 2019’s Outer Wilds. Set in a miniature galaxy in a lonely neck of some forgotten universe, developer Mobius Digital’s puzzle- and exploration-based journey sport is as a lot about fixing mysteries about particular characters as it’s about understanding the intricacies of complete planets. The catch? Your complete world ends each 22 minutes, sending you again to your house on Timber Fireside, armed solely with the information you gained throughout the earlier loop. Outer Wilds is a real religious successor to Majora’s Masks, wherein time is an intricate gameplay system, but additionally the specter looming over each character caught in its internet. —Mike Mahardy

Chicory: A Colourful Story

The place to play: Mac, Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC

In Chicory: A Colourful Story you fill the world with colour, one brush stroke at a time. You develop into a “wielder” accidentally — the final wielder, Chicory, crumbled underneath stress, locking herself in her room. It’s as much as you to make the world lovely as soon as extra. The sport makes sharp commentary on inventive stress, worthiness, and neighborhood help. It’s additionally an unimaginable Zelda-style top-down puzzle sport, with the paintbrush enabling you to do outlandish issues — like journey by way of vines and rivers or climb up partitions. It was considered one of our sport of the yr contenders in 2021, and even now the sport is a standout. —Nicole Clark

Hyper Gentle Drifter

The place to play: iOS, Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, Home windows PC, Xbox One

One other top-down journey masterpiece, Hyper Gentle Drifter is an open-ended journey that, like The Legend of Zelda, subtly directs the participant to stage up and develop into extra highly effective earlier than taking up the subsequent boss or the large dangerous. Coronary heart Machine’s world, explicitly impressed by The Legend of Zelda: A Hyperlink to the Previous, is well worth the exploration, and the invention that awaits will enthrall you. —OG

Elden Ring

The place to play: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Collection X

What’s left to say about Elden Ring? Rather a lot, I believe. It’s as extensive as it’s deep, as humorous as it’s melancholic, and as punishing as it’s empowering. And with new DLC out, I think many people are making a return to The Lands Between, every time which may be.

And whereas it’s straightforward sufficient to check it to Breath of the Wild — or at the least, developer FromSoftware’s take on Breath of the Wild — Elden Ring owes simply as a lot to the Zelda sport that began all of it in 1986. Elden Ring’s creators refuse to carry your hand as you discover a foreboding, mysterious, usually beautiful wilderness, its dungeons, and a snaking underworld that lies beneath it. Boss fights are as intense as they’re terrifying, and discovering a boss’s weak point may imply venturing the opposite aspect of the map to search out its Achilles’ heel. Like Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring could look new, however its concepts date again to a sport a few younger boy spelunking within the Japanese countryside. It simply took us a long time to catch as much as that daydream. —Mike Mahardy