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When Nintendo showed off The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s new skills a month-and-a-half ago, I was impressed by how wildly different they seemed from Breath of the Wild’s. Though Ultrahand had clear similarities to Magnesis, it took the basic utility — moving an object around with telekinesis — in a completely different direction. The other powers Nintendo revealed in that presentation, Fuse, Ascend, and Recall, were even stranger, pushing the game into brave new frontiers that Breath of the Wild had left untapped. As exciting as these all seemed, I held out hope that TOTK would bring the old abilities back, too.

It didn’t, but that hasn’t bothered me much. Ultrahand, Recall, Fuse, and Ascend open up so many new possibilities that I rarely mind that I can’t freeze water or stop a bokoblin in place. But I do find myself missing Remote Bombs.

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That wasn’t what I expected going into Tears of the Kingdom. Compared to the ability to freeze an object, whack it a bunch of times with a hammer, climb onto it just as the pent-up kinetic energy is released, and ride it across Hyrule, the ability to detonate bombs from a distance wasn't especially sexy. But I used Remote Bombs constantly and, as I’ve started to dig deep into Tears of the Kingdom, I notice their absence more than any of the other powers.

Zelda Breath of the Wild Link holding cube bomb in shrine

That’s because Remote Bombs were a vital part of combat. A Lynel might be able to kill you in one hit, but you could pepper it with Remote Bombs from a distance and slowly drain its health bar. It’s cases like that — times when I’m up against an opponent I’m clearly outmatched by — that I miss having a consistent ranged attack in my toolkit.

Yesterday, I was exploring a cave where a special object had been marked on my map, when I stumbled upon a Stone Talus, the big rock monsters that — at least early in the game — can reduce your health to nothing if they land a single attack. As I was fighting it, my bow was hardly doing any damage and, regardless, I quickly ran out of arrows. That meant that my only remaining option was to climb on top of it and wail on its ore goiter weak spot. But, by doing that, I opened myself up to that one hit it needed to kill me.

And kill me it did, repeatedly, before I moved on, vowing to come back when I had some more hearts. But, in Breath of the Wild, I likely would have been able to win the encounter by holding back and throwing bombs at the weak spot when I had an opening. Admittedly, Tears of the Kingdom does present a wide array of new battle tactics. I may not be able to use Remote Bombs, but I can build a stealth bomber from spare parts and drop the Hyrulean equivalent of a nuclear weapon on a Lizalfo. Remote Bombs are gone, but the game has replaced them with many more interesting tools. Which has made me realize that, sometimes, I want more consistent, less interesting tools, instead.

Tears of the Kingdom is making it much harder to be boring. That's a gift in the long-term, and an obstacle to overcome right now.

NEXT: We Need To Accept That Zelda Has Changed