If today is the day I lose my gamer cred forever, so be it. I have only ever completely beaten one game in the entire Legend of Zelda series. To the irritation of many, it’s not even one everyone tends to gush about for hours on end, claiming it’s the greatest game ever made. I’ve been watching everyone around me getting extremely hyped for Tears of the Kingdom while groaning over the fact that all of my gamer friends will once more be asking me why I’m not going to pick up this obvious Game of the Year contender.
So, here it is, my full confession — I have only ever beaten Nintendo Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda. Now that plenty of you are rapidly blinking to make sure you read that right — or are now swearing off my entire opinion on sight because of my game of choice — I need you to hear me out. There’s a reason the simplest game in the series is the one I sat down and finally beat despite everything else the glorious world built by Nintendo has to offer.
The last piece that will solve this puzzle is the only other game in the series I ever got close to beating, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. This portable game with such a fun world has been massively praised — and for good reason! It was so easy to bring with me everywhere and play, slowly working my way through the puzzles and adventures. But then, I had a busy week with no time to game and had to set down my Game Boy Advance partway through one of the series’ often lauded puzzles. By the time I got back to playing, I was trapped hopelessly, unable to regain my place or figure out the way I needed to go forward. Thusly defeated and disappointed, I put the game down and have never returned to it.
I want to live in a world where I can take off work for a few days to spend that time with an entire weekend on top of it to completely dive into a game, but unfortunately, I’ve got bills to pay. I will never forget in my childhood picking up Wild Arms on the PlayStation One and digging into this massive grind of an RPG for an entire summer vacation. But I know better than to pick it back up to relive my nostalgic youth today because I don’t have the time to grind in what feels like millions of monster battles; I have better things to do than the same exact interactions over and over again just to experience a good story. In that same vein, I don’t have time to waste on a game that makes me recraft items because they break all the time. That was the worst part of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and I will stand by that until I’m lowered into my grave.
And don’t even get me started on how much other fantastic media Tears of the Kingdom has to compete with for my attention. Have you seen just how stacked this season of anime is? Because if you haven’t, you need to go watch Oshi no Ko before you can’t without being spoiled because otherwise, what are you doing with your life? That and Disney somehow expects me to watch only a million Marvel and Star Wars shows and movies these days to keep up with important lore. Heck, in the world of gaming, I literally have hundreds of options to choose from in my backlog! If you include the Indie bundle for Palestinian Aid, the Visual Novel Romance Collection for Black Trans Lives bundle, and the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality that I decided to support through Itch.io, I’ve literally got hundreds of games to choose from!
Believe me, I get it: A long game that can keep people coming back for months is incredible, but I’m tired of shorter indie games being crapped on as something “lesser.” For some of us, that’s how much time we have to invest in a given day to enjoy our gaming escapism. I have a partner I love and want to spend time with, cats who need plenty of playtime, and I want to bake a fresh loaf of bread every now and then because, yeah, I picked up baking during lockdown like everyone else — sue me!
So, if I have enough time to pop into my favorite Gacha game on my cell phone and maybe read through a nice visual novel while still doing everything else I want to, that will be my choice, thank you very much! With so many things to balance, I simply do not have time for a game I have to invest so much in and will likely hit a roadblock that’ll take me months to overcome. I cannot invest all the time necessary to enjoy the game before major spoilers start dropping everywhere; I refuse to make my life stressful just to be involved in the cultural gaming zeitgeist about Nintendo’s latest creation.
Yeah, I have only beaten the Game & Watch title in the series because it was easy, I could get through it in one whole sitting, and it’s still honestly fun despite its age. Is that really a crime? Maybe puzzle-solving and dungeon-crawling just aren’t ways I want to unwind while gaming. Heck, my answer to why I don’t want to play Tears of the Kingdom could have simply been “the LoZ series just isn’t for me,” but it’s almost impossible to say things like that without a deluge of follow-up questions that are really just people trying to berate you into playing their favorite games.
So, hey, if you have no intentions of picking up Tears of the Kingdom for some of the reasons I listed — or literally any other reason under the sun? Just know you aren’t alone. Maybe we can all watch one of the many fantastic gamers on YouTube go through it, or just read the fan wiki summary of the story once it’s online so we can keep up with the gaming discourse around us. A game we’re actually interested in is probably coming out soon, anyway.