Category: IGN

In most 4X games, the achievements of your past civilizations only live on in animated discussions with friends over drinks later. Your Gandhi from a previous Civilization 6 campaign isn’t going to come through a portal to save the day in a later one, with the scars of a nuclear war against Alexander the Great still marking his slender frame. That would be rad though. And it’s a big part of why I’ve been coming back to Age of Wonders 4, as the rulers I led to victory actually do ascend to a mighty pantheon and become a recurring cast for future adventures. That’s only the icing on top of a well-crafted fantasy strategy game with varied tactical battles and a near-perfect pace.

Rather than telling the story of many alternate earths or distant galaxies, starting over on a fresh map is baked into the story of Age of Wonders 4, where powerful Sorcerer Kings teleport between many different realms in their quest for power and glory. And the way this encouraged me to think about a given run as a more digestible, if not exactly bite-sized, six- to twelve-hour sprint helps to build the sense of lasting investment in the progress of my pantheon. It’s a great way to do account-level progression that doesn’t feel forced, artificial, or over-monetized. At least in the review build, I didn’t spot any sneaky microtransactions. The tendency lately to add them right after launch has put just about everyone on notice for me, but so far so good.

Along the way, you can unlock neat new stuff from ruler cosmetics to functional combat items, to challenge maps like a frozen wonderland ruled over by a Chronicles of Narnia-esque ice queen that I really liked. And in addition to being very respectful of your time, these themed, story-based realms feel significantly different from just dropping into a standard 4X map with conquest, development, and research-based victory conditions – which you can also do, with tons of interesting customization options. Often, the victory condition in a story realm is to complete a series of quests culminating in a showdown with a memorable antagonist. I had such a good time with these, I almost found it hard to go back to the more traditional style of play.

The other thing that had me planning two or three campaigns every time I started a new one is the in-depth, freeform empire creation tools. It’s probably the most customization of this kind I’ve seen in a purely fantasy game, and I was especially excited by how it let me play against stereotypes. You can make noble orcs in shining armor who march dutifully to battle with holy words on their lips, or bloodthirsty cannibal elves who live for destruction.

The visual aspect is mostly just cosmetic – it comes with some suggested racial traits that fit the classic fantasy version of each race, but you can of course change those out. Lanky dwarves who live above ground and love magic? Sure. Feline necromancers who ride around on giant spiders? Go for it. Your culture pick – Barbarian, Feudal, Mystic, and so on – defines most of your starting roster and how your empire’s economy works. And there are only six of those. So if I were being harsh, I could say there are only really six playable civs with a lot of little bells and whistles to swap out. But the magical progression system that carries you through the ages does a lot to alleviate that feeling.

Rather than technological ages, Age of Wonders 4 has five tiers of mystical tomes unlocked through research, each providing increasingly powerful units, spells, and campaign mechanics. They’re divided into six alignments – Astral, Materium, Chaos, Order, Nature, and Shadow – with two tomes per alignment per tier that might be very thematically different. Within Chaos, for instance, you can focus on fire magic or revelrous, aggressive infantry like berserkers. Doubling down on one affinity or mixing and matching are both very viable, creating a practically absurd number of combinations for what your race might become by endgame. I especially love the racial transformations at certain tiers, which might turn your people into plant hybrids who can move much easier through forests, or frostlings who can build farms on snow. The cold never bothered them anyway.

This amount of customization doesn’t always come without some hitches, though. Remember that cool ice queen map I mentioned? I made a badass race of wolf-riding frost vikings to tackle it, but I found that its provinces were often affected by a modifier called Arctic Blizzards that isn’t visible in any way on the map, and it blocks your units from healing even if they’re parked in your capital city. You have to actually mouse over a unit to see if they have the modifier, meaning I was constantly marching my armies around in the snow to find a safe province where they wouldn’t freeze to death.

That’s a pretty big oversight for such a punishing mechanic. And even completing their final transformation into beings of pure ice didn’t remove the penalty! I found more strange edge cases like this the more tweaking I did with my campaign setups. Sure, you can play on a Dune-like desert world where everyone’s capital starts underground, then infest it with Cthulhu monsters, but you might find the mechanics haven’t really been fine-tuned for all the possible, weird combinations yet.

The tactical battles, which take place on their own maps, aren’t quite as exemplary as the strategic core of Age of Wonders 4, but they are just as fast-paced and can offer some seriously satisfying challenges. The bestiary is huge, with everything from ogres to astral monstrosities to demons spawning as neutral or hostile NPC factions, in addition to the forces of your rival civilizations. The one place it feels like kind of a letdown is when you’re assaulting a major enemy city. It doesn’t really feel like an epic struggle through the streets of a vast metropolis. At most, it’s a scuffle over the outer defenses protecting what looks more like a village. But I did love seeing some of the bigger engagements that are possible with multiple armies on each side.

I definitely have to applaud the graphics and UI as well. The balance Age of Wonders 4 strikes between realistic and stylized is just about perfect for me. Every unit, from a proud elven archer to a snarling wolf, is readable at a distance and projects a strong personality. The maps all look great, whether you’re starting in a serene meadow or on some alien-looking astral plane. There’s quite a bit of customization for your leader and units as well. And all the interface panes are well-organized, nice to look at, and easy to navigate. Nested tooltips make it easy to get just as much information as you want. And sometimes figure out what the hell the narrator is talking about when they bring up some lore concept from other games in the series you may not have played.

In a surprise plot twist, Microsoft’s Activision-Blizzard acquisition has been BLOCKED by the UK’s CMA regulatory authority. We spend most of the show discussing the ramifications of this as well as what Microsoft might do next. Plus: we kick off the show with some quick impressions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our interview with Todd Howard, who answered all of our Starfield questions after the big reveal at the Xbox Showcase:

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

What you lack in lucky five-star gacha pulls, Honkai: Star Rail may make up for in trash.

Well, perhaps not quite that good, but the new HoYoverse RPG has treasures lurking even in the dump. As Star Rail officially went live less than 24 hours ago, fans have already found themselves fascinated by investigating every trash can they encounter.

Rewards range from resources like Ancient Coins to an actual trash can avatar for your profile.

What happens when you repeatedly interact with the trash can in Honkai Star Rail?#honkaistarrail pic.twitter.com/g4IHDVOKPT

— Jiu Jiu subs (@qwertdwlrma) April 26, 2023

Dialogue exchanges with the assortment of junk vary, too.

In the video above, the boring bin looks about as ordinary as can be minus the whole video-game-inspect-this-thing shine. After a few bizarre interactions and judgmental expressions from March 7th and Dang Heng, the Trailblazer scores an Ancient Coin.

I think my favorite thing about honkai star rail is that all the trash cans have something unique to them, literally spent like an hour just talking to every trash can i see pic.twitter.com/F8qscodMTy

— LE PEPSI GIRL (@Awsie6662) April 26, 2023

“The two trash cans stood tightly side by side as if no force in the world could separate them,” reads the dialogue shared by Awsie6662 on Twitter.

Other snippets include all sorts of moments of infatuation with the world’s cheeky garbage lore. It’s not a particularly new RPG mechanic, but the HoYoverse take has about as much charm as digging through the literal trash… can.

Star Rail’s receptacles have even earned a spot in the hearts of fan artists, like this dumpster-diving comic from Renai1000se on Twitter. The game’s subreddit and official channels have a scene for the Star Rail Trash Can Fandom, too.

Some comments make their own declarations of love, while Reddit users like Crysaa add: “I didn’t expect the trash can lore to be so deep BUT I AM HERE FOR ALL OF IT.”

Honkai: Star Rail just made its debut on PC and mobile with a PS4/PS5 version still in the works. It’s yet another free-to-play RPG from Genshin Impact developer HoYoverse, serving as a follow-up to its older action title, Honkai Impact 3rd.

IGN recently broke down the basics of the astral adventure, particularly charmed by the voice cast and setting.

Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She’s worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today’s FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.

Diablo IV will let you skip its campaign with a press of a button, but don’t think you can just bypass the forces of Hell — you’ll need to finish the campaign first.

In the latest Diablo IV video titled, Inside the Game: Your Class Your Way, a brief shot shows characters being able to skip the campaign. That way, players don’t have to redo all of the story content again with future characters they create. Diablo global community development director Adam Fletcher clarified that players will have to beat the game at least once in order to skip future campaign reruns.

Lead quest designer Don Adams also noted that players can skip the campaign at any time, including at the character creation screen or after. Furthermore, he says that there are other uses as well. Players can explore different classes with alternative accounts before settling on a favorite, replay their favorite parts of the story, or grab a specific quest reward before skipping to endgame content.

As @PezRadar mentioned, this becomes available for your account after beating the #DiabloIV campaign once.

Each character can then skip at creation or any time after…? https://t.co/yPph2CueUi

— Don Adams ? (@_DonAdams) April 25, 2023

Diablo has a long history of deep endgame content that can stretch over months or years, with players rolling up new characters and trying to beat increasingly difficult dungeons. Diablo 3 made it possible to access its version of the endgame, Adventure Mode, by going straight to its rifts, but Diablo 4 streamlines it still further with a simple button.

A lengthy grind

This is a good way to respect a player’s time because, according to Diablo IV’s director, it will take at least 150 hours to reach level 100. Additionally, it will take around 80 hours to complete each season’s battle pass.

Diablo IV launches on June 6, 2023, for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. In IGN’s Diablo IV review in progress, we said, “I continue to adore its build-crafting system, the joy of spontaneous alliances that its online model allows for, and the surprisingly engaging combat, which was made even better with the new classes in play.”

Diablo IV is going to have a final beta test from May 12 to 14 called “server slam” which will stress test the game’s online infrastructure.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

I was curious what Humanity would feel like to play, with such an “out there” premise – “the player wakes up one day as a Shiba Inu puppy made of light, who must guide crowds of people into a strange pillar of light,” but going hands-on I’m happy to report it presents a delightfully puzzling diversion, bringing both classic puzzle elements and new ideas to bear in fresh and fun ways. I was drawn in instantly and had a blast reaching 100% in each new level I played during my preview.

Much like some of my favorite puzzle games, like Echochrome, Hitman GO, Catherine, & Monument Valley, to name a few, Humanity takes a single idea and cleverly iterates on it. That idea? Direct a steady stream of humans from their starting point all the way to the goal.

Humanity asked me to run and jump across stages cleverly constructed of blocks, swim through floating cubes of water, and use commands like ‘Turn,’ ‘Jump,’ ‘Float,’ ‘Hit,’ and others to guide the humans to the pillars of light at the end of each level. Various hazards like pits, moving obstacles (which will push the humans in various directions), and more were added at a fantastic pace as I proceeded, and each new gameplay wrinkle had me carefully examining each map, rotating and inspecting it to find a way forward.

At first I was afraid, I was petrified – I kept thinking “how could Respawn follow up on its outstanding Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order?” But then I spent so many nights playing the sequel finding out how they got it right and Cal Kestis grew strong, and I learned how to get along. And now we’re back, in outer space… okay, okay, don’t leave! I’ll stop. The point is that with vastly expanded combat options, bigger, more open maps, vastly more abilities to play with, and enough collectable stuff to fill a Correllian freighter, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is in many ways the Batman: Arkham City to Fallen Order’s Arkham Asylum. And much like the Arkham games did for Batman, nothing else convincingly captures playing as a Force user quite as well as this.

Especially considering that there’s no reason not to go back and play Fallen Order before starting Survivor if you haven’t, I greatly appreciate that the sequel starts you out with most of the powers and upgrades that Cal had already acquired – there’s no corny amnesia or other, “Oh no, my powers are gone!” gimmick to make you re-learn how to double-jump or use Force push, and no Jawas snuck up and stole away the climbing claws that make scaling walls much faster or the Scomp Link that lets BD-1 hack things. Outside of having to earn back your healing canisters and life and Force bar extensions, this is more or less Cal as we left him five years prior.

So we’re already off to an exciting running start when things kick off with a brief caper on Imperial Coruscant that calls back to A New Hope before making a thrilling escape. You’re quickly thrown right back into Force-pushing Storm Troopers off of ledges and chaining together movement tricks like wall-running, climbing, swinging, and sliding down ramps. And that’s just the beginning – the Spider-Man-style grapple (which only works on pre-designated points) is introduced before you leave Coruscant, and the unlocks keep coming from there on at a rewarding pace. When you unlock the mid-air dash ability to pair with your double-jump, things really take off – you can cover such crazy distances without touching the ground, changing directions twice to reach things around corners, that I had to completely rethink what was possible. It’s not as though Survivor invented the air dash, but Respawn makes excellent use of it, further flexing those Titanfall muscles.

Moving around is definitely satisfying but lightsabers are, of course, the stars of the war. Survivor kicks up the excellent dueling from Fallen Order by several notches with five different fighting stances that are all brilliantly animated to create some of the flashiest and fiercest Star Wars melee battles I’ve ever seen. You don’t even have to be all that good at nailing the timing of strikes, parries, and dodges for fights to look spectacular and smooth as you carve a swath through enemies (but if you are it looks even cooler), and the fact that arms and legs can now sometimes get severed from Storm Troopers and other humanoids – not just droids and creatures, who get absolutely shredded – makes it feel more gratifyingly powerful than ever during kill animations.

After dabbling in the single, double-bladed, and dual-wielding stances that carry over from Fallen Order, I settled on the two new ones: the Kylo Ren-inspired Crossguard style and the hybrid Blaster stance that answers the question of “wouldn’t it be cool if Han Solo were also a Jedi?” The Crossguard treats your lightsaber as a slow and heavy broadsword that’s great for hammering a stunned target into the floor, while the latter equips you with a sidearm to dispatch small enemies without having to close the gap and sure makes short work of flamethrower troopers, packs of animals, or others who like to get in close. It’s, quite literally, a blast. Of course, once I unlocked the ability to throw my Crossguard saber to hit enemies a little farther away I felt like either stance was capable of taking down just about any enemy when needed and settled in for the ride. These sabers pair nicely with the expanded set of Force powers that allow you to do things like pull in an entire group of enemies close before executing a spinning slash to cut them all down like blades of grass.

You can only equip two of the five stances at any given time, which at first seemed artificially limiting – and it is, when you think about it – but I came to appreciate it because it gave my version of Cal more personality as a fighter. You can, of course, swap out your stances at any meditation circle, but especially in the early hours you only have so many skill points to go around (and only one free respec). Each stance has its own skill tree, so you’re encouraged to specialize, and by the time I reached the second half of the story I had my clear favorites, and no regrets.

It’s a story that does the job it needs to do well: get you from one exciting action scene to the next. Early on and quite literally by falling into it by accident, Cal finds himself in a race to locate what’s effectively a map to a lost treasure planet. That’s very much in keeping with the idea of him as the Nathan Drake of the Star Wars universe, and leads to plenty of excuses to visit ancient (well, old and abandoned at least) puzzle chambers where you have to use your wits, the Force, and an expanded range of gadgetry to solve them. Importantly for a game like this, it seldom feels like there’s a lot of time pressure to rush to the next objective, so taking a detour on a side quest to investigate missing prospectors in a mine, find out what went wrong in a droid factory, or investigating the many other rumors you’re presented with by locals doesn’t feel like you’re neglecting a responsibility to save the galaxy.

Despite being a largely enjoyable adventure, my main issue with the story is that nearly every big twist is foreshadowed so heavily that it was only ever a matter of when a reveal would happen, not if. The identities of the main villains are secret as of now, and shall remain unspoiled here, but they’re pretty easy to see coming a lightyear away. In any case, at least they’re written and acted with enough depth that they don’t feel like retreads of anyone Cal’s faced before, and neither is a two-dimensional Sith Lord who somehow has returned. There’s more to them than that, as Survivor successfully prioritizes character over plot for the most part.

The cast I enjoyed so much in Fallen Order is back in full force to go through those motions, and this time Cameron Monaghan’s Cal is not so easily outshined by the crew of the Mantis. His motivations are about more than simply fighting the Empire now: it’s about whether he can live a life where he’s something more than a resistance fighter, let go of his guilt, and find a home that’s safe. His path after escaping Order 66 is contrasted against what could’ve been if he’d had different priorities and made different choices. That gives him a lot more character growth than he had as purely a traumatized fugitive learning to be a Jedi. His decisions have more weight to them, making him a much more realized protagonist this time around.

Naturally, BD-1 never left Cal’s side, but the rest of the crew are all given very human reasons for their parting ways after Fallen Order and why they’re coming back together now. Greez’s loveable cantankerousness made him a favorite, and he’s happy to deliver more of that along with some sage wisdom while carefully avoiding overuse of his “grab some seat” catchphrase as he pilots the Mantis. Merrin returns with a new look to immediately rekindle some of the romantic chemistry between herself and Cal, and her more casual attitude after having traveled the galaxy makes her even more endearing. And though she’s less of a constant presence due to Cal no longer needing a mentor, the ever-intense Cere is more powerful than ever, and that power is displayed memorably in one of Survivor’s biggest action moments.

Aside from a large cast of colorful alien side characters, including an ancient protocol droid with a loose screw and a goofy sea slug with a reverse diving suit and a thick Scottish accent, the other new member of the group is Bode. He’s another roguish mercenary type who, much like Cal did in Fallen Order, initially comes across somewhat blandly as the two bro it up to establish the friendship they’ve struck up fighting the Empire together. As his sympathetic backstory is fleshed out, however, he does become a more interesting companion.

Getting to fight alongside allies on certain story missions this time around is a treat, especially watching Merrin use her Nightcrawler-esque teleportation to blink around the battle and pick off targets (riding her coattails leads to Jedi Survivor’s single most thrilling action sequence). They can’t be killed or downed in action so there’s no management or babysitting you have to do, but if you want to, you can have them prioritize an especially annoying raider to keep them busy while you thin out his friends’ ranks. Beyond that, they’re only really used to open up paths for you to reach new areas, which boils down to you pushing a button when prompted, but their banter and companionship definitely liven up the scenes in a way BD-1’s adorable bleeps and bwoops couldn’t do alone.

Of course, with new friends must also come enemies (it made sense in my head, at least), and following a whole game of battling mostly Imperial Inquisitors it’s a relief to see that the Empire’s role here is more in the background. Their parade of trooper types and security droids are mostly here to provide variety after you’ve been fighting the main enemy army of raiders and their salvaged Separatist battle droids. It’s a clever way to plausibly merge the original trilogy and prequel trilogy enemies together into the same game – one that takes advantage of the fact that Survivor takes place at nearly the exact midpoint between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.

There’s also no shortage of beasts that resemble what we saw in Fallen Order – no matter where you go in the Star Wars galaxy, it seems life finds a way to make giant bugs and big angry wampas. It’s a good mix of enemies and subtypes that builds on Fallen Order’s already respectable lineup, and when I found myself in the middle of a fray where different factions are battling it out (including any weak-minded foes I’d temporarily Force-confused to my side) it’s a great time.

On the subject of creatures, one of Cal’s many new abilities is to tame non-aggressive animals to be rideable mounts, though that isn’t ever used for much besides galloping across empty areas slightly faster than Cal could’ve run on foot. Given that running doesn’t drain his stamina, it seems that it’s mostly just for atmosphere and to make people stop asking Respawn if they can ride the animals. Granted, it is pretty cool to watch the towering, long-legged spamel carry you across the deserts of Jedah. (Yes, they really called an alien camel a spamel.) There’s also a flying animal that can be used as a glider, though only at very specific points, so it’s not much of a game-changer either, but it does play nicely into environmental puzzles.

Speaking of environments, this journey takes us to a handful of never-before-seen planets, some of which are expansive and include a variety of extremely different areas within them. Koboh, for instance, has everything from grasslands to swamp to underground facilities, a massive crashed Separatist ship, and even its own version of Cloud City. They’re far from the typical Star Wars one-note worlds like Tatooine or the forest moon of Endor that are either 100 percent desert or completely covered in redwoods, respectively.

Every time I entered a new area I’d circle the camera, looking for the telltale signs the level designers leave to indicate a wall is runnable, a ceiling can be clung to, a crack can be squeezed through, and more. By the time I was done with my 30-hour run through the story I had trouble even remembering to use all of the abilities I had learned because there are simply so many. Levels are meticulously thought-out puzzles in and of themselves, and only rarely did I run across something that didn’t feel intuitive or fair once I took into account all the tools at my disposal.

Considering that this adventure is roughly equal parts combat and puzzle-solving, the fact that there’s such a broad selection of types works in its favor. Puzzles that deal with directing energy beams and even painting paths are clever and well done, on par (and sharing some ideas) with a lot of what we saw in God of War Ragnarok last year. Some involve using BD-1 to launch projectiles to trigger remote switches, some have rolling homing bombs, and some use deployable balloons you can grapple to and launch off of. A few of the main storyline puzzles gave me cause to scratch my head for a few minutes before the solution sprung to mind, which is just about the right level of challenge. They aren’t groundbreaking in their design, but consistently fun nonetheless.

Throughout it all, Survivor is a gorgeous game with beautifully detailed environments and characters… and perhaps as a result, not one of the best performing. My PS5 playthrough saw some fairly gnarly slowdowns from the expected 30 frames per second in 4K Quality Mode, especially when fighting around smoke or fog, which made timing by parries and dodges difficult. Disappointingly, even the 1440p Performance Mode isn’t close to holding a locked 60fps. I also saw a few crashes and bugs that forced me to quit and reload my save to progress (though this was before the day one patch). EA has naturally promised more patches will come with improvements on all platforms, but if history is any guide it might take a little while before it’s completely ironed out.

A smooth frame rate is certainly important when battling Survivor’s multiple lightsaber-wielding bosses, because there’s no shortage of challenge in learning the timing of parrying their strikes and dodging their unblockable attacks. I must confess: after several hours of banging my head against the brutal final boss I finally resorted to turning the difficulty down a notch to see the ending in time for this review, which hurt my pride because I’d made it to his final phase but couldn’t quite get over the finish line.

That said, there’s not a lot that felt especially novel about these fights; they’re well made, but conventional and one aspect that hasn’t seen a great improvement from Fallen Order. One smart tweak that does stand out, however, is that when a boss kills you, the next time you come at him he’s not glowing yellow signifying you’ll get your health back the first time you hit him like a normal enemy does. Instead, there’s a glowing pillar of light where you fell, and picking that up heals you. That allows you to save the full-health pick-up for when you need it rather than just as the fight begins – it’s a smart and welcome evolution of Fallen Order’s already ingenious system of tipping the scales in your favor when you need it.

When it comes to tracking those bosses down in the first place, I certainly appreciate that the Jedi games give you a map (unlike other games of this style that I could name that delight in making you figure it out) but it does leave something to be desired when it comes to usability. Just like in Fallen Order, this map seems so dedicated to the idea of resembling a light-blue Star Wars hologram that it’s not always easy to figure out what you’re looking at and the directions its waypoints give you aren’t always accurate. However, its dotted lines were generally good enough to point me in the right direction when I struggled to find a path forward or was feeling lost, or redirect me when I was trying to figure out a way past an obstacle I didn’t have the right gear for yet. Also, this time Respawn has granted us the ability to fast-travel between save points, which feels like an act of mercy when the objective is on the other side of one of these large, labyrinthian maps.

These maps are dense, too, and Survivor is packed full of stuff to do around the edges of the main story, including bounty hunters and legendary creatures to track down and kill, combat challenges, and more. Some of them are seriously tough, even on the default Jedi Knight difficulty level; I cannot tell you how many times I got one-hit killed by that damn rancor’s grab-and-snack attack, other than that it was literally dozens. But I got him in the end! You’ll also unlock a full New Game+ mode once you beat the story, which is a welcome feature that Fallen Order didn’t have until more than six months after launch.

On top of all of that, there’s an intimidating amount of stuff to collect, including plants and fish which can then be displayed in the cantina in your base town on Koboh. But while there might be some unlocks at the end of those sidequests, it doesn’t do much to convince you that these are activities you should spend a lot of time on… unless you really like plopping down seeds on rooftop gardens or watching a virtual aquarium.

Of course some rewards are much more enticing to a Star Wars fan. Cal’s lightsaber and blaster both have many customizable cosmetic parts that you can mix and match to form your own creation, and even though you can barely make out those details when you’re using it in a fight unless you zoom in with the photo mode, it’s a fantastic, loving bit of Star Wars detail to obsessively mess with whenever you find a new piece.

Plus, all of the available lightsaber blade colors are unlocked shortly after the start so that you can make Cal more your own from the very beginning. That also goes for his range of clothing options, which is far more extensive this time around, as well as his entirely new haircut and beard options. He’ll always be the same Cal Kestis underneath it, but your soul-patch and mullet-wearing character will have a very different vibe from mine, whose crew cut and beard resembles a redheaded version of Amos Burton from The Expanse. Yes, it’s a little silly to find hair and beard options in treasure chests, but sure, why not?

Similarly, I’m just delighted at the customization for BD-1. In the first game, you could only change his paint job, but his enduring popularity (which led to his Mandalorian cameo) has paid dividends because now we get many more options for components on his face, head, “ears,” body, and legs, as well as detailed color options and even the level of wear and tear. Just wait until you see the way his body reacts to having pieces swapped out in the customization menu! It’s another lovely little touch in a game that presents so many.

It should come as a surprise to exactly nobody that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is going to be an absolutely massive video game with a staggering amount of things to do and see. After all, it’s the follow up to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, one of the biggest, deepest, and rewarding open world games ever made. But what truly caught me off guard with my time playing Tears of the Kingdom wasn’t just how much there was to do – and there was certainly tons – it was just how much creative freedom I had as I attempted to take on every corner of it so far. Breath of the Wild’s core philosophy was effectively “See that landmark in the distance? You can walk there!” In Tears of the Kingdom, it’s more like “See that landmark in the distance? Well, you have a hundred different ways to get there, and a lot of them might not work, but when one does, hoo boy, you’re gonna feel like a genius.”

Let’s step back for a sec, or should I say, soar above. Floating high above Hyrule are the Sky Islands, and that’s where the large majority of my preview of Tears of the Kingdom took place. If the Hyrule below is the updated open world from Breath of the Wild, the sky sections feel more akin to The Wind Waker, just minus the big red talking boat to get around. There are tons and tons of islands up there in disparate clusters and formations and it’s up to you to figure out exactly how you’re going to travel between them, take on their endless puzzles, conflicts, and caves, and move on to the next one. You can soar through the sky on your trusty paraglider, hoping you’ve got enough stamina to not only make the trip but to scale the side of whatever you’re trying to get on top of. If you’ve played Breath of the Wild, you’re already very familiar with that exercise. But this time around, you’ve got a lot more options, and that’s where things get really clever and occasionally, really funny. Using some parts lying around, I decided to make a goofy double decker bomber jet to fly through the skies in style. I couldn’t tell you why I decided to make it a double decker besides “I thought it looked cool at the moment” and really, sometimes that’s reason enough.

Link’s got a couple of great new abilities this time around, the most significant of which is Ultrahand, a remix of his Sheikah Slate rune powers from Breath of the Wild. Ultrahand basically works like The Force in Star Wars: you can use it to push and pull and rotate objects in your environment around you and then stick them to other objects. You won’t be able to use it on organic things like animals or enemies or anything bolted down to the ground like a tree stump or a rock structure, but there are some interesting exceptions to that rule. In one puzzle, a stranded Korok trying to reunite with another Korok on a different sky island needed help getting over there, and since he was wearing a large hiking backpack, I was able to use Ultrahand to pick him up, put him in a minecart, and get him back to his buddy, netting me two Korok seeds as a reward. So we’ll see how often these exceptions appear in the world at large. Hopefully there are enemies with decorative bags or accessories on them that we’re allowed to grab and throw around because chucking a kitted out Bokoblin into the clouds would be a fun alternative to just stabbing it. What? Don’t judge me.

Back to my goofy double decker bomber jet: using two large fans that were conveniently in the area, I stuck them to some ship parts using Ultrahand and then pulled a steering stick Zonai device out of my inventory to give my ship some maneuverability while flying the mostly friendly skies. Zonai devices are new this time around and you’ll be able to find them in giant capsule toy looking machines scattered around the world. The devices have a variety of looks and abilities and they can generally be used to manipulate or enhance objects around you or in your hands. One example I saw was a rocket shaped Zonai device that, when fused to Link’s shield, allowed him to rocket jump into the sky anywhere, similar to Revali’s Gale from Breath of the Wild, only this time it’s limited to your number of rockets on hand rather than being an ability that needs to recharge, which is definitely going to lead to some crazy and clever puzzle and combat solutions. The building process was slightly cumbersome at first, but I suspect it’s something that will come second nature after some extensive play time. Breath of the Wild controlled a bit untraditionally compared to your standard issue open world game, and Tears of the Kingdom throws in several more interactive systems, radial wheels, and object manipulations. You’ll probably still hit the horse whistle button by accident (which, sadly, didn’t summon Epona in the skies. Somebody get that pony a jetpack!). Luckily, you’ll be able to save the custom vehicles and contraptions you create and summon them when you need them if you have the right materials, so you won’t have to rebuild everything from scratch each time. You’ll also occasionally stick two objects together thinking it makes sense, only to instantly realize that was a very stupid idea, like this hot air balloon glued to a box fan, which created a normally functioning box fan with a decorative hot air balloon stuck to it. Good job, brain.

This trial and error, genius and idiot song and dance was exemplified best in my attempts to solve a big puzzle in the world where I had to return a glowing stone to a marker on the map with several gaps and a giant rotating sphere shape between it all. I had Ultrahand and Fuse at my disposal, plus Recall, a power that would reverse time on a performed action like I was rewinding a video file. Using gusts of wind, my hang glider, and my bare arms I made several valiant but ultimately inefficient attempts to get the stone across the sky before realizing that I could just Ultrahand the entire puzzle ball and rotate it to make a walkable path to the finish line. Again, good job, brain.

My puzzle attempts, my bomber jet, and pretty much everything else I assembled to get around the world had a distinctly Looney Tunes quality to them, particularly the parts of Looney Tunes where Wile E. Coyote is stubbornly building wobbly catapults, rocket skates, and wingsuits in his pursuit of the Road Runner, a plan that always seems like a good idea until it backfires or he looks down. There’s a lot of trial and error in Tears of the Kingdom, which means a lot of failing, falling, or just barely puttering to the finish line, but a new tool called the Travel Medallion – a blue circle symbol you can drop on most surfaces in the world – allows you to respawn at the location you placed it. If you’ve got a particularly tricky section ahead that could potentially involve a lot of falling to your death, well, just drop your Travel Medallion near you and start experimenting without worrying about having to backtrack. You can pick it back up off your map screen whenever you want and place it somewhere else later. Breath of the Wild was already fairly liberal with checkpoints, but Tears of the Kingdom lets you basically place one anywhere and that’s a wonderful new addition.

Speaking of placing stuff anywhere, another very fun new tool this time around is Fuse. Fuse lets you take objects and materials you find in the world or in your inventory and apply them to your shield, weapons, and bow and arrows. I was getting mobbed by an army of tough bad guys in a fort and saw a giant spiky ball in the world and instinctively used Ultrahand to try to smack it against the bad guys like I would have used Magnesis in Breath of the Wild…before realizing I could just fuse it with my weapon and turn my fairly crappy sword into a much, much stronger spiky ball sword. This was not only fun and cool but it also increased the durability of my weapon, which meant it wouldn’t break as easily. Theoretically you could keep fusing a thing to the same weapon over and over to keep it from shattering which feels like an interesting make-good for people who hated the whole weapon breaking thing in Breath of the Wild. It doesn’t totally overhaul or scrap that disputed design decision, but it does give you a ton of options on how to avoid it while simultaneously giving you a ton of new weapon combinations to play with. Some of the other Fuse combos I saw were a minecart fused shield, a horn fused broadsword, and ruby fused arrows that depleted a rare stone in my inventory to create elementally charged projectiles – which were fiery, awesome, and much stronger than your typical arrow.

On a technical level, everything I played ran at a consistent framerate – so far, at least. Breath of the Wild was a launch game for the Nintendo Switch and ran into occasional dips in framerate in dense outdoor areas like the Korok Forest. For years Nintendo fans have speculated that Tears of the Kingdom would launch alongside a more powerful Nintendo Switch Pro model so bigger, more resource intensive games wouldn’t run into framerate issues but unless Nintendo has been secretly hiding a next gen console for the Tears of the Kingdom launch day (spoilers: they’re not) then the six year old Nintendo Switch hardware will have to do. Most of the sections I’ve played of Tears of the Kingdom took place in the sky and ran fairly smoothly, so we’ll have to see how things fare once Link starts fighting a bunch of enemies in a thick forest in the vast Hyrule down below the clouds. Either way, if you didn’t personally have an issue with those things in Breath of the Wild, you’ll probably be fine here too.

All in all, from Ultrahand to Fuse and dozens of sky islands, these are just some of the things that make this game – the rare direct sequel to a previous Zelda game – feel the most fresh so far. That’s because lots of animations, objects, outfits, sounds, and more feel very similar to Breath of the Wild, which is admittedly a slight letdown based on how much of that game hinged around surprise and discovery. But Tears of the Kingdom is layered (or, uh, tiered) and the way you interact with nearly everything has evolved in creative and dramatic ways, so I have little doubt that there won’t be a million new things to do and see in the full game. For now, I’m giddy to not only experience it all myself but to also see how the surely massive player base will make and break this game in brilliant and silly ways. With every puzzle and conflict having such a ridiculous array of solutions, the results will likely be endlessly astonishing and entertaining, especially if you look at what hardcore Breath of the Wild players have already been doing for years in a game where it often feels like you weren’t supposed to do those things. Nintendo has taken that ideology and legalized it in Tears of the Kingdom and that’s immensely exciting, even if it means there will be lots of hilarious fumbling and falling along the way.

Cooking hearty, fulfilling, and occasionally dubious meals was an integral part of survival in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Sure you could have skipped that feature entirely and just eaten 40 apples and a bag of raw meats every time your health was low after a time fight, but combining the right ingredients to cook a big custom meal that would boost your strength, stamina, and resistance to the elements was definitely a much smarter winning strategy.

Well, cooking is back in the upcoming sequel The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and there are a few really cool new improvements to go with it.