Making these fairly simple changes to how The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is played enables one to experience Hyrule in a brand new way.
A few simple changes are enough to completely refresh the experience of playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for even the most thorough players. While there is a great deal to discover in TOTK, it is inevitable that the game will lose novelty over time for any player, especially on a second playthrough. However, by changing one’s approach to the game, it is possible to create plenty of new and interesting personal challenges to overcome.
Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild before it, can easily provide dozens of hours of entertainment, perhaps even hundreds. However, by the time Hyrule has been saved from Ganondorf, it is likely that it has already been fully explored, with perhaps a few Shrines or side quests left to complete. Moreover, the more the player travels through Hyrule, the more doing so becomes rote, less full of explorative wonder, and more like a simple routine. To keep the game engaging, whether to seek out the final few secrets or even replay the game entirely, players must create their own challenges.
Disallowing Ultrahand & Fast Travel Makes TOTK A New Game
By creating self-imposed restrictions on gameplay, TOTK can be made a much more challenging experience for any player. Two especially notable changes that can heighten difficulty and prompt innovation are limiting the use of Ultrahand and completely banning fast travel. The first restriction means that players must come up with new and inventive ways to tackle problems, whilst the latter ensures both extensive exploration and a new line of careful planning. The combined effect of these restrictions forces the player to strategize in a way that playing TOTK normally would not require them to do.
It is, of course, impossible to eliminate the use of Ultrahand completely from TOTK; the ability is needed to complete many shrines, as well as environmental puzzles, including some of those found in Temples. Nevertheless, restrictions can be placed on the kinds of vehicles that Link can build. The incredibly popular hoverbike is an easy choice to disallow, as are more ambitious creations, such as builds made with rare and unusual items like the famously physics-breaking Depot railing. Making it more difficult to travel long distances like this encourages innovation whilst also ensuring that players do not miss interesting landbound sights by traveling exclusively via hoverbike or other airborne vehicles.
There are many ways that vehicle restrictions can be defined in TOTK, with the more simple involving prohibiting the use of certain Zonai Devices. For example, restricting mounted weapons would make facing Gleeoks and monster camps much harder. Of course, given that land, air, and sea vehicles are all necessary for completing various side quests and various shrines, as well as accessing various parts of TOTK’s map, simply banning certain varieties of vehicles entirely would be inadvisable. In the end, it is up to personable preference on whether to restrict Link’s choices to only one specific vehicle for each environment or approach situations on a case-by-case basis.
Traversing Hyrule Without Fast Travel Makes Every Journey An Important One
Much like limiting vehicle usage, banning the use of fast travel in a playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom means that long distances must be considered much more seriously in any scenario. For example, it is no longer feasible to warp between material-rich areas and Hyrule’s various Fairy Fountains in order to quickly upgrade armor. Nor is it so easy to collect and sell those same materials to raise funds. As a result, any long-distance trip by necessity becomes far better planned out, ensuring that the caution that precedes venturing into an unexplored area of Tears of the Kingdom’s map always remains a point of consideration.
To consistently travel Hyrule without the aid of fast travel, players must map out Link’s route in advance, taking into account the local monster population and any environmental hazards. This will, naturally, significantly lengthen any playthrough but will also encourage extensive time and resource management. This makes any journey far more significant and, by extension, lends added weight to any one destination, as well as encouraging extensive exploration of a local area to minimize the need for later backtracking. Moreover, by always taking the time to physically travel to each location, the player will be more encouraged to find alternative paths and explore the quieter parts of Hyrule.
The Depths Get Even Scarier Without Fast Travel
Removing Fast Travel makes exploring the Depths a particularly fraught endeavor. There are only a few places where Link can exit the underground realm through the use of Ascend, meaning that he will, by necessity, spend extensive periods of time underground. Again, this makes any visit to the Depths a significant investment of time and resources, especially with the valuable Gloom-countering Sundelions only being found above ground. With the Depths therefore becoming far more threatening, it is easy to see the related content becoming more appropriate for the mid- to late-game; even the supposedly simple “Camera Work in the Depths” side quest, which in turn delays upgrades to the Purah Pad.
Considering the prevalence of fast travel and its usefulness in open-world games, it is all too easy to miss secrets or interesting details by only warping between points of interest once they have been discovered. Of course, having Link only travel by foot instead will significantly increase travel times, especially in later stages of the game, although the use of horses or Zonai vehicles (should the player allow themselves to do so) can alleviate this to some degree. In any case, it cannot be denied that playing TOTK without fast travel will greatly enhance familiarity with Hyrule’s geography and, by extension, can easily increase game immersion.
Ultrahand and Fast Travel are among the best features of Tears of the Kingdom, and Link is expected to make extensive use of them during the course of the game. Limiting their usage can, therefore, greatly increase the game's difficulty and will certainly increase the time taken to complete it. But for players who have already experienced everything that TOTK has to offer, the added challenge that restricting their use of these same features creates can be invaluable. Doing so encourages taking an entirely new approach to the game, which in turn can lead the player to experience Hyrule in a brand-new way.
There are many ways that inventive players can challenge themselves in an open-world game, from placing restrictions on usable equipment to introducing additional requirements needed to progress through the game. For The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a self-imposed ban on using Ultrahand and fast travel are both simple and incredibly effective changes to the standard gameplay. The long-term effects of these alterations mean that any player, no matter how familiar they may be with Hyrule, will see and explore it with fresh eyes, perhaps even discovering some new locations in the process.