Zelda Fans Demand Quick UI Fix for Tears of the Kingdom

Some fans of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have taken to the internet to request a minor UI adjustment that would address their concerns with how the game handles certain abilities. This request arose following the game's successful navigation through a wave of negative reviews.

Caution: Spoilers regarding mid-game gameplay lie ahead. While Tears of the Kingdom fails to address all complaints raised against Breath of the Wild, Nintendo's latest Switch exclusive has managed to surpass its predecessor in most aspects. However, Sage abilities, which are the game's equivalent to Champion Powers, are a notable exception to this trend. As these abilities are now linked to allies who follow Link on his adventures, Nintendo has opted to standardize their activation method. Therefore, instead of holding down the jump, block, or attack button as in BOTW, all Sage abilities in Tears of the Kingdom are triggered by approaching the corresponding ally and pressing A.

Many players have expressed frustration with the current activation method, finding it to be clunky and inconvenient in certain situations. Calls for improvements have been made online, with Reddit user Icy_Bumblebee offering a simple yet effective solution to the problem. They suggest adding a quick selection menu for the companion abilities assigned to the down D-pad arrow in Tears of the Kingdom. While this button is currently used for whistling, replacing the map shortcut in the ability menu with the whistle would streamline the process.

This solution would be particularly useful as the map command is redundant since accessing the map in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is as easy as pressing the minus button on the left Joy-Con or controller. A dedicated menu would also make ability activations much less stressful during combat, especially for defensive powers like Sidon's shield, which can be counterintuitive to activate when following an ally who is constantly rushing enemies.

Some fans have expressed confusion over how Nintendo managed to make Tears of the Kingdom's ability activations worse than in Breath of the Wild, while discussing Icy_Bumblebee's UI fix proposal. They concluded that Nintendo took the previous game's elegant control scheme for granted. However, some fans remain optimistic and are willing to tolerate the clunky ability activation mechanic given that Tears of the Kingdom's Link is no longer alone in his adventures. It's unlikely that Nintendo will revamp the user interface in future Tears of the Kingdom updates, so fans should not count on it.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on Switch.