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This article will contain spoilers for the shrine designs in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I love how Tears of the Kingdom integrates its main story quests and environmental elements into a cohesive ecosystem, and it's great to see that shrines are not left out of that setup. I vividly remember how shrines in Breath of the Wild felt out of place, like a hodgepodge of brainteasers plucked from various games and tossed together, without a solid reason for why they exist in Hyrule the way they do, or why I should even give a hoot about solving each and every single one, besides the mental self-gratification.

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In Tears of the Kingdom, however, I'm finding myself genuinely invested in every single shrine, for they have a secondary – and more purposeful – role that finally adds meaning to their original scattered existence. As soon as you set foot in each realm or domain, you will find a tutorial-like shrine waiting to bring you up to speed on the domain's unique mechanics. Whether you find yourself floating inside bubbles, balancing on glider-like contraptions, or harnessing the power of light to crack open new pathways, the game will always ensure you're ready to dive into the challenge.

Getting used to each domain's unique and sophisticated mechanics is undeniably the main attraction of Tears of the Kingdom's story puzzles. But experimenting with the new make-you-own-multitasking machine Zonai devices is equally important for both traversal and combat.

Tears of the Kingdom cart craft

And I'll be honest, I wasn't initially thrilled about this aspect. I was worried I'd have to rack my brain for hours trying to figure out the right builds, gather resources, and master their potential (or eventually give up and resort to flipping through tons of online guides). Thankfully, I found out shrines here also serve to build your confidence and unleash your creativity when it comes to tackling these intricate crafting elements and making the most out of them.

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Every shrine neatly arranges a number of tools or gadgets – be they fans, motors, or planes – in a more orderly fashion than you'd typically come across in the wild. Moreover, each shrine gives you precisely the tools you need for a specific task. In one shrine, for instance, I had to grasp the physics of the Zonai sled and how it glides across surfaces, all while making use of the shifting sand as a cushion.

Sure, you still gotta figure out the right combination of Zonai Devices to create puzzle-solving functional contraptions on your own, but the shrines offer a more focused experience than the main stuff, making it easier to wrap your head around the mechanics than you would outside, where you stumble upon these tools by chance or snag them – also randomly – from the gacha-like machines installed everywhere.

Tears of the Kingdom zonai devices shrine

That being said, I won't deny that I occasionally find myself turning a blind eye to these Robolox-y devices and balancing myself on those thin rails instead of crafting railroad cars or platforms to help me reach the other side, or maybe using the rewind ability to create backward momentum for climbing instead of wrapping up an actual functioning platform.

But that didn't take away from the fun, and only added to it, because the shrines here are pretty versatile, and open to you coming up with different puzzle solutions and approaching the challenge from different angles (at least more so than Breath of the Wild).

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What's even more fascinating is that not all shrines are fully built in the game. Some might start off looking like little condensed crystals (like baby shrines waiting to hatch), and as you embark on your skybound quests, you'll need to figure out how to crack these crystals open, evolving them into full-fledged shrines. These shrines giving purpose to the whimsical-yet-deliberate topography of the sky realm feels much more meaningful to me than just scattering them all around like in other open-world games.

Tears of the Kingdom compact shrine close shot

The one-on-one combat shrines (one of the most repetitive forms of the old shrines) are still about, but they are few and far between. In their place, you'll find a bunch of clever combat playground-like shrines, where multiple enemies are strategically positioned for you to outsmart using your wits and the items you snag within the shrine. Since around 1/6 of the previous shrines were recycled strength tests like that (according to this analytical roundup on Reddit), this ended up being another aspect of the shrines in Tears of the Kingdom that I appreciated Nintendo jazzing up to keep it from getting repetitive.

In Tears of the Kingdom, shrines are always part of something bigger, and always connected within the game's larger ecosystem. They're not just standalone puzzle houses; they serve as prerequisites, guideposts, rewards, and even puzzles in themselves. In Breath of the Wild, my focus was solely on getting them done without really thinking about what I could learn from them or how much they truly meant to me beyond the heart or stamina upgrades. They were almost arbitrary open-world collectibles. But now, things have changed.

Tears of the Kingdom sets a shining example of how an open world can make every single piece matter, and leaves a lasting impression on your mind, no matter where you are or what you're up to in Hyrule.

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